


all is now harmed

by fondleeds



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 2000s, Angst, Australia, Drought, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Character Death, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 81,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fondleeds/pseuds/fondleeds
Summary: It’s still that dreamy kind of dark, nothing seeming real, but he knows that it’s time to go, to whistle for Pippa and eat whatever he’s got left in the fridge and start the drive down to Molly’s.He can’t seem to open the door. Maybe he doesn’t want to face it, this new thing. Having Louis here feels like a betrayal. Harry tries not to think about what his Dad would have to say if he saw the journo sleeping on their pull-out, here to shake a settled sheet and watch the dust fly again.-AU. Harry's a farmer, Louis writes for The Age, and it hasn't rained in the Bourke Shire for six years.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles/Original Character(s)
Comments: 148
Kudos: 118





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi all. phew. it's been a while...
> 
> originally, i really wanted to post this fic once it was complete, but for the past year or so i've been in a fun mental prison and have found it really hard to write anything new/complete anything i've started, even despite being stuck at home for five months now thanks to miss rona. 
> 
> i'm hoping that if i start posting this story piece by piece, i'll be inspired to finish it just like i always intended. i started working on this fic two years ago and it's the biggest challenge i've ever given myself as a writer. as an aussie i've always wanted to write a story rooted firmly here and also cover the millennium drought. this fic is close to my heart and even though it's still a WIP i hope one day i'll manage to complete it. it's likely that i'll be editing this/changing a few things as i go along with the writing process. this story is made up of three parts (each with three chapters), and though i've written the first two parts, there's still a long way to go for the third. 
> 
> the next few bits of this note contain more detailed warnings that are more spoilery to the story, but i still want to touch on them for those who would like them; feel free to skip if you want to just dive in!
> 
> \- this fic involves cattle farming for international export and deals with animal death. but this is not a story about whether cattle farming is right or wrong. my own opinions about cattle farming are not expressed in the characters/plot and the export of animals is never explicitly mentioned. i've tried to do as much research as i could. still! big warning for that.
> 
> \- there are instances in the story where characters later explain graphic recounts of a road crash, so heads up for that if its something that might make you uneasy
> 
> \- general warning for shitty behaviour from parents/guardians throughout and poorly handled discussions about mental health
> 
> title from the song of the same name by ben howard. playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/63W1pCOIZFrdD6nYJRybzg?si=JEe-Dw45QFuFP9hWdDaffQ)!
> 
> i really hope u all like this one. it’s a labour of love and tears. it's surreal that i'm finally starting to post it after all this time!!
> 
> **please do not translate or repost any of my work to alternate sites.**
> 
> ♡♡♡

_PART I: EL NIÑO_

_-_

_Louth, NSW_

_2007_

When he finally blinks awake from a syrupy, unclear sleep, the soft whisper of the radio is the first thing he registers. A woman’s unintelligible voice breathes next to him on the bedside table, muted with the little crackle of a weak signal. It occurs to him then that he’s been drifting in and out of dreams for a while now. Sweat forms a thin sheen across his top lip and the dips of his spine. The light coming in through the crack in the window has traveled its slow and sweeping journey from the door to the bookcase, and soon, it will spread and start to curl over the soles of his feet.

It’s the slow mornings like this that lull him into rumination, not because he wants to, but because the heat always tucks him into his own head this early, when he’s vulnerable and still tired from hanging desperately to the small snatches of sleep managed throughout the night. The velvety tongue of sunrise brushes dark-dry maroon and scorching on the walls and everything feels somewhat familiar; the lump by his left hip in the mattress and the cracked cover of whatever book he read before bed lying spread on the dark floor, his tacky skin and the smell of dust and all the little things in his room right where he left them. His bruised body, naked and burnt tan atop the twisted sheets. All in place, in order, just like any other morning.

It becomes so easy to learn the intricacies and nuances of a home, after time. He’s known since boyhood to hop-skip-jump the first step by the veranda because the wood is split underneath, and he knows the exact way to twist the old copper taps in the shower to get the water just perfect. The kinks in the lounge rug that catch his boots and the odd place utensils end up in the kitchen, the organized mess of their sheds and three clicks the television needs before it flickers into life.

Yet, there’s something about the way nature encapsulates them all here that transcends this sense of familiarity. He can twist the taps and skip over steps as much as he likes, but he can’t close a curtain over the sun, not even for a little while. Maybe he should be used to it by now. It’s the same sun he’s seen since he first opened his eyes, rising and falling every day. But as he flips his pillow to the cooler side and tucks his nose into the crease of his arm, letting the seconds tick down, he still can’t place the uncomfortable heat that crowds around his ears and the back of his neck when the darkness outside splinters amber and gold with fire.

It’s the last week of February, and at five-thirty in the morning the heat radiating from the ground outside is already boiling the mercury upwards. Harry’s alarm flitters to life beside his head, dull beeps that he silences only a few seconds later. With his face buried in the pillows he stretches out his sore joints. His spine locks and cracks as he arches up with a sigh and rubs callused fingers over his eyes. When he manages to extract himself from the sheets a heavy warmth pulstates against the back of his neck through the curtains, the fabric shaded dark orange and lined with the glowing aura of flame ready to lick through the glass, the frame already burnt black with past infernos.

He stretches again when he stands, arms high. Despite the early hour, a numbing headache begins to bloom at the base of his skull. With another soft sigh he stumbles from his stuffy bedroom and out into the lounge, then down the thin hall, taking in the momentary comfort of cool tile under his feet as he closes the bathroom door behind him and starts the shower.

He doesn’t wait for the water to warm, just turns the taps in the way he knows how and stands right under the spray with his head down. A few drags of his fingers through his hair. A rub of an almost non-existent bar of soap along his chest and under his arms. His face to the spray, for one simple and indulgent moment. Then he shuts the water off and steps out almost as quickly as stepped in, towelling off his hair before slipping out into the hall again.

He dresses numbly, jeans and a long flannel and socks. Boots laced up tight.

The light falls soft and balmy through the kitchen windows. The way he slowly swings the fridge door open and closed again, waiting for things to appear, would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that the only things he has left inside are a near-empty tub of yoghurt on it’s expiry date, half a cups worth of lite milk, and string cheese. Nothing new appears. He grabs the yoghurt and finds some dry oats in the cupboard.

The kitchen radio plays quietly as he fills his bowl, perched by the cobweb-ridden window and trickling out into the silent house. Early morning news. The tepid drone of the weather report. _Heatwave continues. High thirties. High pressure system._ Harry taps his nails against the benchtop and ignores the blinking light across from him, the blue of it ebbing gently from the phone like a _hello._

It’s so quiet.

The flywire door creaks when he nudges it open with his toe, black tea in one hand and a plastic bowl in the other. The fields, flat and dry, roll out as arid desert, all the dust suspended and shot through with the early morning sun. He takes a seat on the edge of the veranda. Not a cloud above him, or a tree that speckles his vision to the slowly brightening horizon. Just the emptiness, and the house, the silhouette of the old sheds to his right and the old Hilux parked around the corner.

He wets his lips and tucks his fingers there, whistling shrill and sharp to break through the silence.

It only takes a few minutes for Pippa to appear. The russet of her fur blurs with the shadows and the fields, almost as though she’s become one with the ground. There’s a thin film of dirt along her face and back, hind legs coated in it. She’s been digging again, probably underneath the house and out by the back of the sheds. She often roams in the mornings, now, escaping out the doggy flap in the laundry to search for Dad and rare ravens to chase.

“Morning,” Harry says to her, when she finally trots up onto the veranda and immediately tries to lick into his bowl of yogurt, dark eyes only peeking with further interest when he holds it away from her. A mistake on his part. He should know better. She tries to jump at him next, playful, tongue lolling about. She’s still just a pup, really, but she’s long and lean and so strong, his best girl. “Don’t be rude. Yours is inside.”

She cocks her head at him and finally sits. 

They watch the sun rise up together, the way they’ve always done, but it still feels different, and has felt that way the past month. Sometimes he wonders if Pippa can understand him, if she can sense everything around them turning and changing, out of their control.

The heat is oppressive and dry as ever. Harry closes his eyes against the grit of air for a moment, scratches at his jaw, then behind Pippa’s ears when she whines at him for attention, nuzzling in close to his side.

“Another day, huh?” he whispers to her, smudging his lips against the top of her dusty head. “You and me, little Pip.”

-

Driving never fails to be mundane, and it never fails to inherently frustrate him. It’s possibly obsessive that he watches the kilometres tick upward on the dash, that he counts each one and tightens his fingers involuntarily around the steering wheel, doing the math in his head on how much diesel he burns from the tank with each trip. The frame rattles on the rough tar, and on either side of the road the earth is flat and empty, not even a hint of dried up tussocks amongst the bland dirt.

Pippa holds court in her rightful place on the passenger side, wet nose stuck out the half-open window and shiny eyes squinted against the sun as they trail the empty road south from their property. _Cloudstreet_ is wedged bent and sun-faded up on the dash, untouched for months, and from the rear-view mirror a tiny glass case hangs. Each time they bump over a divot or pothole Pop’s ruddy face swings into vision and catches Harry’s eye. Harry nudges the dial on the stereo up. _I remember, I remember, I go leaps and bounds._

It’s a mechanical and thoughtless drive, ingrained so firmly in him that he could do it blind by now. With a tired, heavy blink, he rests his arm on the window frame and lets his head loll back against the seat. The sun’s burning them up, a knife-edge in the sky, the beginnings of today’s perpetually untainted blue fighting to be seen against the glinting stabs of orange.

Harry taps his fingers against the glass and tries to quieten his mind. As they pass by the burnt out shadow of the wooden cross by the road, the dry clump of what once was flowers, he turns a blind eye. It’s too early to be thinking about it. He still has the entire day ahead.

The hazy outline of the fence comes into view just minutes later, then the imposing farmhouse and the bony mulga trees. It’s all silhouetted, a shadow cast by a ring of candles, the incalescent concentration of sunrise snuffing out it’s surroundings. Harry winds the windows all the way down as they approach to feel the illusion of a breeze, the only one he’ll experience all day once he’s out in the paddocks.

The truck ambles over the dirt road and he slows it down as they pass up the laneway. The calves, already pacing anxiously in their pens, perk up with his arrival and the promise of breakfast. Pippa wiggles in her seat when Jada’s dark shadow comes bolting around the side of the house. Harry stops the truck and leans across to let her out, the two keplies running rings around each other immediately and shooting off towards the sheds to play until he calls for them again.

The Robertson farmhouse looms over him when he finally parks out front, a huge old-style weatherboard with white trim and a raised wrap-around veranda. When he was little there used to be huge lilly-pilly trees blooming and twining up with the crosshatch balcony, native greenery bursting from wet soil in the garden beds by the fenceline during the wet spring. There’s not even grass here, now.

Harry lets himself in through the side-door to the kitchen. The benchtop is littered with papers and envelopes, red-stamped bills sorted into neat piles, invoices and letters from the bank that Harry pointedly glides past. He focuses instead on the tiny note that Molly has left him by the stove, smiling at the orange juice and plate of still-warm oat cookies on the bench beside it. Sometimes, when he steps into this house, he is eight years old and well-loved all over again.

_Out on six, lovie. Give Pips a treat for me and bring J up once you’ve seen the calves xx_

He thumbs over her loopy writing as he downs the juice, acidic and too-sharp. It helps to wake him up a little.

Down in the pen, the sun bursts upward from behind the house and into his eyes as he tries to settle the calves, yellow lighting up the hay and dust that’s floating through the air. They’re pushy this morning, mewling at him when he attempts to wade through their crowding. He’ll have new bruises along his hips later. Always does when he feeds them in the mornings.

“Hello, babies,” he whispers to them, petting their bony heads. “Hi. _Hi!_ You’re all so pretty.”

They’re solid despite how hollow and gaunt they look, nothing but taut skin and soft ears, and they’re restless today, the heat making their breaths heavy and wet, desperate for any kind of energy. Little Bella is tucked in the corner when Harry finally reaches her, shiny eyes glowing bright under the morning sun, as is the fleshy scar that runs down the side of her face. She’s so thin, the youngest of them all. Ungainly and frail when she tries to stand on wobbly legs. But it’s no use. Harry knows she’ll have been lying on her front all night, and her tiny legs are useless before she’s had her milk today. He crouches down to her instead.

“Easy, easy,” he hums as she tries to stand again. Her body thrums when he places a gentle hand on the side of her neck to calm her. He holds out the first bottle. The other calves are crowding against his back and he uses his free hand to appease them best he can, scratching at their chins while they bite at his Akubra and his hair.

Bella is fervent as she drinks the milk formula, white chin dotted with it. Harry rubs her ears comfortingly. She’s the runt among them all, and Harry promised her mum that he’d take care of her. He keeps a hand against her cheek and lets her drink while the light warms their backs.

It always takes too long to feed them all. By the time he’s down to his last bottle the sun’s up and beating down on them properly, morning shade quickly diminished to nothing. He’s covered in sweat and dirt and saliva from the calves and it’s only just gone seven. Typical. Pippa and Jada watch from the fence, done with their playing and now waiting eagerly for attention of their own, bodies strung tight with the need to run. With a heavy breath Harry lifts his hat, wipes the sweat away from his temples, and rolls up his sleeves.

The calves chase after him when he slips out of the pen, nudging their noses through the gaps. Pippa is on him immediately to jump and beg for attention. She always gets jealous of the calves, and he indulges her with a belly rub before he gets a move on, calling the kelpies up onto the back of the truck and starting them off towards the shed to strap up the molasses for today.

The drive out to paddock six is slow. Today is a huge shift, but they can’t afford to keep the cattle so far out on the property any longer despite the time they need for the mulga trees to grow back. Harry treks carefully over the dead earth, keeping his gaze away from the dry-white clusters of bones that are scattered under the spindly shade of stripped trees and around the cracked ground of empty gilgais. It's always a bit like roaming an alien planet, somewhere deserted and so far away it’s a little out of touch with reality, but despite there being no roads or signs, Harry could navigate his way through each paddock with his eyes closed.

Pippa and Jade are off like bullets once Harry pulls through into the paddock, straight for Molly and the herd. She’s by the shade of the mulga trees, trying to coax one of the heifers up. At Harry’s arrival, the dull, lifeless cattle ripple with movement, their bony bodies jostling to move towards him. Jada holds them off for now, letting Harry open up the sides of the ute so he can spread the molasses out.

He heads to Molly first, though, accepting the wet kiss on the cheek and the warm hug she has for him.

“Morning, lovie.” She squeezes his waist. “You smell like the calves had fun with you.”

“I don’t know why I bothered to wash my hair, if that’s what you mean,” Harry says. Molly tugs on a spit-dry curl, and with a sigh, gestures to the heifer.

“Give me a hand?”

“Course.”

Molly’s fifty-three and sunweathered and maybe the sweetest person Harry’s ever known, greying hair and round, soft eyes that remind him of the calves, brown and bright, lined by deep wrinkles. They lift the heifer together, arms straining as they help her stand on numb legs, Molly with her arms up around the poor girl’s neck to keep her from folding in and toppling.

“There you go,” Harry hums comfortingly, rubbing the heifer’s side. “Look at that, such a strong girl.”

“We’ll have to keep an eye on her today when we move,” Molly says, still holding the heifer while she adjusts to the weight on her numb legs. “She’s been down the past few mornings.”

Harry bites his bottom lip and says nothing, just keeps rubbing the heifer’s side while Molly looks at him knowingly.

Feeding them is always a frenzy, not because they’re frantic and eager like the calves, but because they’re all so weathered and heavy, unable to carry the weight of their bones as they shove at each other to get to the sticky sweetness of the molasses. Despite the heat they seem compliant today, though, and they start the move as soon as they can, not wanting the sun to rise any higher during the shift.

By the time they’ve got the herd halfway to paddock one, Harry’s forehead is shiny and slick with sweat, hair stuck to his temples and chin. He hasn’t cut it for months now. It’s starting to hang below his ears, brushing his jaw when he lifts his hat to push it back out of his eyes. Molly’s face is set when he glances over to her, sunburnt along her nose again, fingers twisted together in her lap as they lead the cattle through the gates, Pippa and Jade following their movements and commands.

“I’m driving in to see Ev and Ned tonight, I think,” Harry mentions lightly. Molly startles and turns to face him. “Need anything?”

“No, lovie,” she says, reaching out to squeeze his hand with a fumble. Her smile is glazed.

“I won’t stay overnight,” Harry continues. The distant look in her eye is always unsettling. She’s thinking too much, he knows, drifting somewhere else. “Ev would love to see you, Mol. I can drive you back.”

It’s been so long since Molly’s left the farm and Harry knows it’ll be good for her, the same way he tries to convince himself it’s been good for him. All they have is each other, now, and the family waiting for them in Bourke. Molly shrugs and looks out the window. “It’s fine. The petrol’s far too much, anyway.”

“If you’re sure,” Harry says, one last gentle nudge, but Molly just smiles tightly at him and squeezes his hand again. She always puts up this calm front for him, but sometimes, he really wishes she wouldn’t.

“I’m sure.”

By late morning the cattle are back in the first paddock, and they’re eager to immediately strip the mulga trees, craning their necks up to chew at them. Molly watches with an anxious twitch to her legs as they settle in. They’ll be lucky if the trees get them through a few days, if that, and then it’ll be back to the molasses if they can’t get the next loan approved. Harry throws his arm over Molly’s shoulder and pulls her into a gentle hug, then guides her away from the herd and back to the truck. She’d stay out here watching them forever if she could.

They eat lunch at the dining table and try to make a dent in Molly’s mail and bills. Harry’s got a chunky, dust-filled calculator in one hand and a pen in the other, marking off the spreadsheet he helped make up for her. They take stock, count out their barrels of molasses, and ignore the final notices from the banks and the utility companies, the ones with the red, terrifying stamps splattered across the page.

It’s quiet, just the intermittent bark from Jada and Pippa outside as they play. This house has always swallowed noise, all wide halls and wide rooms and high ceilings. It’s spotless, too, every little nick-nack put into place, pillows perfect on the couches, everything where it should be. All the frames on the walls are even, but Harry doesn’t spend much of his time looking at them anymore, at the three figures smiling from behind glossy glass, the Robertsons huddled together in front of the Celtic Cross at sundown.

When he was a kid, the sheer size of this place held unlimited possibilities for fullness and surprise in every nook and cranny. Now it’s a sheer void, all that empty space opening up and threatening him with memories from a different time.

“Need me to check your tanks?”

“No, darl. I’ve already done it.”

Out in the yard, the calves shuffle and mewl and watch the dogs sprint up and down the laneway, kicking up dirt as they go. Pippa is going to be filthy. Harry toys with the edge of the bill in front of him. One of his own. Staring at the invoice brings him nothing but dread. He still feels so much like a child, even more so now, at a time when he has to be the most grown up he’s ever been.

“Elijah called, earlier,” Molly says. Harry pauses his fiddling to glance at her.

“That’s good,” he manages, keeping his voice light. Elijah doesn’t call anymore.

“He tried to send me money.”

“Molly…”

“I wish he’d come home,” Molly says sharply, but then she takes in a slow breath and shakes her head, resting her forehead against her palm. “I know he’s happier there, but I just wish he’d come home.”

Harry stares down at the table, then out through the windows. Pippa is standing by the doorway, watching him back. She paws at the glass when he looks at her.

“Maybe…that’s just his way of saying he’s here for you,” he finally manages to say, because he has to say something before the ball of guilt in his stomach consumes him whole.

Molly huffs a breath that isn’t quite a laugh. She cups Harry’s cheek and gives it a gentle pat. “You tell your dad I said hello.”

“I will.”

“And take those bikkies with you.”

“I will.”

She leans forward in her chair and presses a gentle kiss to Harry’s forehead.

-

Sunset is the decaying gold of umbra, and Bourke cowers in it’s eclipse. Voracious shadows romp over the little township, shards of rusted colour pouring out through the cracks between homes and glossing over windows with fulgent amber. The summer days here are endless, the space between dusk and dawn just hours apart, and even as the hot disk of the sun lowers now, Harry can almost see the transcendence to the new day as he idly passes through the street.

There are children lingering, some on bikes, some barefoot and chasing each other with pink, peeling shoulders. Some wave to him and give chase, calling for Pippa. Harry squints as he turns down onto the main strip, powerlines swooping in neat rows. It’s a simple little place on the surface, modest nature strips all dried up, tiny weatherboard homes with their peeled pastel paint and their tin letter boxes and their blue shell pools that haven’t been full for years, but there are security shutters on the shop windows, and the kids on the streets won’t be going to bed until the moon tries it’s best to cool them all down in the few hours it’s allowed to linger.

Harry is travel-weary and sore when he finally pulls up behind the pub. Darkness falls as a vignette around the new gradient of maroon and orange that blushes like smarting skin from the line of the horizon. The lights are glowing upstairs. He lets himself in with his spare key and trudges up the narrow stairway, Pippa eagerly in tow. He can hear Ned singing along to the radio, the hum of the oven, and one of the footy talk shows on their boxy telly.

It’s been a couple of weeks since he’s seen them all, not since his birthday. Ned greets him with a bright _hey, kid_ and a bone-crushing hug, and Harry's whole body practically collapses forward from sudden exhaustion, like he no longer has to hold himself up. Here, he is their kid, their boy from Louth, and the warmth in this little room doesn’t seem oppressive like it does outside.

Ned’s close to sixty and balding at his temples, a good inch on Harry that he uses to squish him into his solid chest. They sway for a little while before Ned pulls back with a bright smile, turning to the attention-starved dog at their feet. Pippa is unwaveringly expectant.

“Hi, Pippa!” Ned gushes. She bites playfully at his hands while he revs her up. “Pip-Pip-Pip! Oh, you’re a darlin’, you’re a _darlin’—_ ”

“Alright, her ego’s big enough,” Harry cuts in, laughing as Pippa runs an excited circle around the old couch before making herself at home in the little dog bed set up at the foot of it. There’s already a blanket draped over the armrest, two pillows on the coffee table.

“How’s your old man?” Ned asks as he stands back to full height, flicking off the oven. It’s a tiny little thing. Harry often wonders why they bother using a kitchen that’s falling apart when they’ve got industrial sized ovens just downstairs, but he supposes it’s more homey like this, and it’s sweet, too. Ned and Ev always cook their meals up here, set the table and light a candle. It smells waxy already, little flame burning bright in the corner, and Harry scratches lightly at his jaw, expecting the question but still unsure of what to do with it.

“Good, yeah,” he says. “I spoke to him yesterday.”

_Sort of. And I ignored him today. Again._

“That’s good,” Ned says, clapping Harry’s shoulder. “And Molly?”

“Hanging in there. We had a big move today.” Harry leans against the bench and stares down at his toes. “She said Lij called her.”

“Oh?” Ned raises a brow. “That’s…unexpected.”

“I know,” Harry says. He curls his toes painfully inside his boots. “Maybe he’ll come around.”

“Doubt it, kid,” Ned says, but it’s softer, not meant to cause harm. It’s just the truth, and Harry knows it, too. Elijah isn’t coming back here. Not now, not ever. “Alright, you better go down and see the missus. The longer you’re up here with me the more of a scolding I’m going to get for keeping you from her.”

“Like Ev could ever stay mad at you,” Harry says sarcastically, because she absolutely could.

“Go’n then, get.” Ned shoos him. “I’ll keep Pippa comfy up here and make the couch up for you.”

“I really shouldn’t stay,” Harry says. “Molly’s expecting me in the morning.”

“Well, you’re not making that drive back in the dark,” Ned says, stern. “Not a chance in hell.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“End of discussion, kid,” Ned says. Harry crosses his arms lightly over his chest and scuffs his shoe. “You can’t please everyone. Mol will understand if you’re a little late if it means you’re safe and tucked up with us.”

“Okay,” Harry breathes. “Whatever.”

“Oi, don’t _whatever_ me,” Ned says, shoving Harry lightly before tugging him into a choking hug, knuckles in his hair. At Harry’s protesting shouts, Ned only laughs. “Toughen _up_ , princess.”

“Rack off,” Harry grins, flustered and red when he finally escapes Ned’s hold, poking a quick finger into his stomach before he retreats down the stairs, trying to flatten the static of his curls as he goes.

It’s gotten a little darker out, when he shoulders his way past the door. The bugs are starting to hum, low like a pulse, and the world is at that strange, unorthodox point in time when the sky seems lighter than the world around them, like the night is waiting to spring up from the ground and cover everything up above like a sheet. Harry takes a moment to breathe it in, the remnants of the dry day, the sweat that starts to bead along his top lip from the way the hot air lingers.

He makes a pitstop through the kitchen to say hello, Jenny and Mitch on the hots and prep tonight, and they let him steal a spoonful of soup and curry before he’s shooed away with a pinch to his hips. It’s an old kitchen, the labels on the ovens and the hobs worn away, but everyone who works here has been around so long that they’re no longer needed. It’s instinct and routine, moving amongst the little benches with ease. Finally, he slips out through the kitchen door and behind the bar.

 _The Evelyn_ has felt like a second home to him for as long as he can remember. There are two rooms, the first cluttered with little tables and the bar, old stools that have lost their shine forming a neat row, a television shoved in the corner that is used exclusively for sport and the news, and enough mismatched art and pictures on the walls that the place could be a museum for the townsfolk that hung the pieces there.

The second room is smaller, a little thing used for functions and for dancing, the gem of a jukebox that Ned restored standing proudly on its own by the old fireplace. Harry’s got memories in that room that date back years, being a tiny boy thrown up into the air and dancing with his toes balanced on the tip of Dad’s boots, then later, being sloppy off too many pots and celebrating countless birthdays and holidays, those nights always feeling like a familiar tradition.

The most common placeholder is a red and white scarf, pinned on the old brick that separates the two spaces, hanging frayed in its rightful place. There’s more Swans memorabilia tucked in everywhere, signed jerseys behind frames and old newspaper clippings pinned up to the notice board by the entry. The most recent addition is the hole in the wall that Ned still hasn’t fixed, made by his knee when the Swans lost to the Eagles by a point last year in the grand final. He’d been so far on his ear that he’d stumbled over trying to leave the pub in an enraged stupor.

Ev’s polishing glasses when Harry slips his arms around her stomach and whispers an eerie _boo_. She curses him as she flinches and swats him away with her cloth.

“You _bugger_ ,” Ev says, and nudges Harry’s ribs to get him to loosen his hold so she can turn to face him. She’s a tiny round woman with a rounder face, a strong, throaty laugh that rasps up and booms out from her chest, and a whisper of a scar along the line of her nose from the skin cancer she had removed. Her eyes are always shiny little gems, flecked gold like sunlight, and Harry smiles warmly down at her when she firmly pinches both his cheeks and pulls him into a proper hug. “God. I’ve missed you so much, lovie.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Harry says, but he ducks closer and squeezes her tighter, because he’s missed her, too, and he refuses to let her see the way his eyes get just a little hot at being in this embrace.

“You know I’d see you every day if I could,” Ev says as she pulls back. She pinches his cheeks again. “Schooner?”

“Please, yeah,” Harry sighs out gratefully. He stretches his arms up and skirts his way around the side of the bar, taking a seat on a worn stool. The bar-top is sticky under his elbows, the varnish coming up again. He waves lightly across the room at familiar faces, all tucked into their parmas and talking quietly amongst themselves as they watch the pregame for tonight's match.

“Swans up?” Harry asks. Ev slides a frothy schooner to him. He takes a slow, long sip and tries not to pull a face at how bitter it is, or at the icky way it sticks to his throat. No matter how much of it he drinks, he still can’t get used to the stale taste of beer.

“Tomorrow,” Ev says. “You think Ned would be upstairs if they were?”

“That’s true,” Harry snorts. “He seems like he’s doing okay.”

“Mhm,” Ev hums, though not very convincingly. Her fingers drum on the sink, and Harry watches the lines of her face, the way her eyes duck before she smiles gently and reaches behind her for a fresh cloth. “Did you bring Pip?”

“Of course,” Harry says. They’re practically attached by the hip. “She’s upstairs.”

“So you’re staying.”

“Yeah, well.” Harry shrugs and looks down into his glass. “Ned’s already roped me in, hasn’t he?”

“You make us sound like such a bore to be around,” Ev teases. Harry’s stomach curls unpleasantly.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know, lovie,” Ev says, then softer, “I know.”

Harry tucks his shoulders in and takes a feeble sip of his beer, keeping it close to his face to hide away a little while Ev stacks up glasses and rinses the mats, the bustle of the pub washing over him. He’s so fucking exhausted that he almost forgets he’s still got to pop down the street, and he hasn’t eaten since lunch, and now he’s planted another seed of unease amongst the people who are just trying to look after him. With a wince, he stretches his feet back and forth to test the pull in his calves as he sucks in a slow breath.

“Tilda around?” he asks. “I need to steal her discount card.”

“No need, baby,” Ev says. She rings out a barmat into the sink and washes her hands, her back to him. “All your food is upstairs, and I made up some dinners in the freezer for you to take home.”

“ _Ev_ ,” Harry groans. “I told you not to do that.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you know me at all.”

“I don’t want you to spend all that money on me,” Harry huffs, cheeks hot. Ev shoots him an unimpressed moue over her shoulder. “I’m serious! Dad left me enough—”

“Harry.” Ev reaches out, brushes a thumb over Harry’s forearm, and gives him one of her looks, the motherly, chin tilted down, brow raised look that means it’s time for him to be quiet, to breathe, and let her do what she can for him. The look that says _I’m always right_ , and she always is. “I know I can’t keep my eye on you, and I know you don’t always want me to. The least I _can_ do is make sure you’re eating enough.”

“And I am,” Harry says. “I promise, I’m trying.”

“I just…” she sighs, shaking her head. “I worry about you, out there all on your own.”

“‘M not on my own,” Harry says, only slightly petulant. He tucks in his shoulders and frowns around the sticky rim of his glass. “I’ve got Pippa, don’t I?”

There’s a silent beat of understanding between them. Harry looks away and slides the schooner across the bar-top, chin in his hand. Ev squeezes his wrist.

“You know what I mean.”

Harry doesn’t respond to that, just takes a long gulp of the new beer Ev sets down in front of him and concentrates on tracing the furry, worn edge of the barmat under his hands. There’s a sudden itch under his fingers to get in his truck and scream down the highway, back to Louth, to his kitchen, where he’s left that blue light flashing. He can see it perfectly, the cold reflection it casts on the cabinets in the dark, and then he thinks about what’s waiting on the other end, how he’s failed to be a decent son again and pick up the fucking phone when he’s supposed to.

“Can I get a Bundy and coke, please?”

“You want it on a tab, darl?”

“Yes, please.”

Harry glances beside him, glowering slightly before he can stop himself, rim of his glass to his lip. It’s become instinctive to close up the moment he hears a voice that’s unfamiliar. Lately, there have been backpackers and nomads and kids too curious for their own good crawling like fleas through all their business. This guy looks no different. He’s got soft, clean hands, the first thing Harry notices when he reaches for his drink.

Nobody around here has hands like that.

“Jai here, Ev?” Harry says, rolling his eyes away from the man and pushing his stool back noisily as he stands. He empties his schooner and slides it across to Ev.

“Outside,” she says, a warning look in her eyes. “Don’t smoke. And be back before we close up, okay? You know how Pippa gets.”

“Yea-p,” Harry drawls over his shoulder. “I got it.”

Jai’s in his usual spot, half-hidden around the side of the building and perched at a broken plastic table, old takeaway container full of greasy chips in one hand, cigarette in the other. The ashtray is already warm with flickers of orange. Jai used to just have one, draw it out through his whole break, but the last few times they’ve caught up it’s been two or three, darts at a constant between his fingers to stop his fidgeting.

He brightens when he hears Harry’s footsteps approaching. Away from the front of the pub, the only light comes from behind them, from the moth-suffocated fluorescent bulbs that splay strange white streaks along the dirt.

“Hey, mate,” Jai says, almost a sigh of relief. Smoke floats up around him, grainy, like film with too much exposure, and that’s what this all feels like right now, as Harry wades through the dark and claps their hands together, biting down on a smile. An old tape. Rewound, replayed, over and over again.

“Heya. You good?”

“Yeah, not bad. You?” Jai asks, muffled through a mouthful of potato.

“Yeah,” Harry shrugs. He leans back against the brick wall and props up his foot, arms crossed. “Exhausted, but. Yeah. I’m good.”

“Mm,” Jai hums, nodding. He holds up his container. “You want some?”

“Rather not give myself a heart attack,” Harry says. “Cheers, though.”

 _Fuck off_ is Jai’s eloquent reply. Just being around each other again is enough to make Harry a little calmer. They’ve always stuck together, all the kids that grow up around here do. Jai was always the one to make the effort, too. Harry knew hardly anyone during those first few weeks of school, just Lij, who hung around the older kids most days. Harry was the odd-one out, the baby out from Louth a year younger than the rest of them.

“Haven’t seen you around much,” Jai comments. He’s poking at his chips thoughtfully, like he’s considering whether or not it’ll be worth his time to finish them off. There shouldn’t be much that could have changed during their time apart, but things are stilted. Jai’s shaggy hair looks longer, and Harry isn’t sure if he imagines that he looks a little thinner, too. Jai probably thinks the same of him. “Is Pippa here?”

“That bloody dog,” Harry huffs. “Do any of you even care about me anymore? Am I just a placeholder?”

“Of course you are,” Jai says sweetly. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Oi, fuck you.” Harry grins and kicks at the barely stable leg of the plastic chair Jai’s sitting on.

“Don’t!” Jai shouts. He grips onto the side of the table. “I’ll go arse over and drop my chips. It’s not _funny_.”

“It is, though,” Harry muses, laughter escaping between the words. “Dickhead.”

“Yeah, I missed you, too,” Jai says, then, after a dramatic pause, “Dickhead.”

“You two are so fucking weird.”

Harry turns his head. Tilda’s leant against the bricks a few metres away, watching them with her arms crossed and amusement idle over her freckled face. She’s still in her IGA uniform, bag slung over her shoulder. She probably just clocked off. She gives Harry a tiny smile when their eyes meet, and he clears his throat and lunges at Jai instead of replying, effectively knocking the chips from his hands in their struggle.

“You’re picking those up,” Jai complains, shoving Harry off him. “Matilda, dearest, tell Harry how much of a cunt he is.”

“Hey,” Harry snips.

“No way.” Tilda raises two placating palms. “I’m not getting involved.”

“Whatever,” Jai says. He stubs out his cigarette. “I’ve got important things to do, y’know?”

“Sure, dishy,” Harry says, dripping with sarcasm. “Don’t forget to wear your gloves.”

“You see!” Jai says to Tilda, but she’s laughing. He pokes Harry’s cheek. “Complete flog.”

It’s nice to laugh like this, even more so when Jai tugs him into a rough hug before disappearing round the back. Harry feels almost like he’s fallen into some in-between state, watching him go, a little far removed from everything that just happened.

Tilda steps closer and pokes Harry’s shin with the tip of her worn shoe. “Hey, stranger.”

“Hey,” he says, after a beat. His palms are already prickling. “How was work?”

“What have I said about asking questions we’d both hate to answer?” Tilda says. Harry snorts and hangs his head, scuffing his heel against the dry ground. It’s still so fucking hot out, all the brick along his back warming his skin even through his clothes. “I’ve really missed you, H.”

Harry smiles tightly at her. “Yeah, Tils. I—. I missed you, too.”

In the dark, the freckles along her cheeks are heightened, clustered on the bridge of her nose and fanning out across her cheekbones. She’s so much smaller than him tucked into herself like this, thin hair held up off her face by an old pink scrunchie. With a smile, she plucks his hat off his head and reaches up to muss at his hair.

“You need a trim,” she says, carding her hands through the knots softly. Harry lets his eyes flutter shut for a moment at the feeling.

“Careful,” he hums. “There’s about a gallon of cow spit in there.”

“Gross,” Tilda laughs, tucking a curl behind his ear. It’s curious, Harry thinks, the way they’re standing. Both with their arms crossed, leant against the bricks, like they’re trying to anchor themselves to anything but each other. Harry knows their reasons for doing so aren’t the same. Tilda is always the first one to reach out, to try and pull him in like a rescue-buoy. “How have you been though, really?”

Harry blinks down at her in the dark. Short nails painted aqua blue. Old strawberry gloss losing its shine on her bottom lip. She still has her fingers in the ends of his hair. “Fine. Really, it’s. It’s been fine, y’know.”

“Okay,” Tilda says, eyes flicking over his face. Harry just lets his shoulders go, and thinks _yeah, okay_.

Her car is still parked behind the IGA and it’s dark in the backseat, none of the light touching where they’re twined together. Harry’s almost glad that it’s harder to see. It makes it easier to avoid Tilda’s eyes, to just hide his face into her warm neck where the smell of her perfume is dizzying and familiar. He gets her off with his fingers first, and then she shifts down onto his dick with a gasp, sweat making the knock of their hips slippery. They tip, limbs in a tangle, both his hands on her breasts, mouths sliding wetly together.

Sweat beads along Harry’s lip and temples, making the back of his neck uncomfortably damp, the strip of skin on his lower back wet where his jeans and belt are still snagged low around his waist. Tilda grips to that, gets her fingers in his belt loops and tugs him closer, tugs the material so that it tightens around Harry’s cheeks. That’s what he focuses on. That pressure. Not the breathy noises she makes against his jaw or the moony look in her eyes as she comes.

They split gum, after, splayed opposite each other with their legs crossed over in the middle. Harry chews absently and stares out to the slanted view he has of the now dark sky, thousands of stars blinking numbly back at him from the clear openness. _High pressure system. No clouds._

“H?”

Slowly, he drags his gaze to her. Tilda’s got that reserved, quiet look on her face. She always knows how to read him, to crack him open with just a few words. Harry stares back out to the dark shadows on the street.

“You should stay over,” Tilda says carefully, her hand finding Harry’s shin. He almost jolts away from the touch. “Mum’s been asking after you.”

_Hasn’t everyone._

“Ev’s expecting me back,” he says, cheek to the glass. He can’t face her, not when he’ll be able to see the disappointed flutter of her eyes as she looks out her own window, hand slowly retracting from his leg. “Tell her I love her, though.”

“She’ll go belly up,” Tilda says, and they laugh softly. Harry’s grateful for that, at least. That they can still laugh together.

He doesn’t know why this feels like nostalgia when he’s still living in the very moment, because that’s not how nostalgia works. His chest aches, though, aches the way it does when he accidentally catches sight of certain pictures on the walls, or when a song comes on the radio that makes him think of a different time, or when he’s struck with a memory he wishes he could forget. It’s fuzzy and hurts down to the pit of his stomach, and that’s not a foreign sensation, either.

Maybe that’s just how it is now, the kind of person he’s become; someone who has sex with a girl he won’t ever love the way she wants him to, someone that can’t even pick up the phone, missing things so quickly because he isn’t sure that he ever has his whole heart in it, because he still doesn’t know how to accept that things change and shit happens and somehow they’ve all got to move on.

It doesn’t feel like any of them have. It doesn’t feel like he can.

-

 _Blue Sky Mining_ is pulsing on the jukebox when Harry slips back inside. He feels disgusting and tired and a little hollow, in need of a shower and Pippa’s company and then a solid few hours sleep. Ev’s up and having a dance with a few of the lingering townsfolk, the rest of the pub deserted. He smiles to himself when he hears her outrageous laugh. It fills up the room.

There’s still one figure at the bar, the same guy from earlier, Harry realizes as he approaches. Ev would’ve either ignored his presence completely or managed to get this guy’s whole life story. Judging by the empty glass on the bartop, Harry can guess that she let the guy be, probably for the better. He’s writing down something in his notebook, cursive that’s too messy for Harry to read even as he leans across the bar to pinch his empty glass, letting his eyes wander freely over the pages before the guy looks up at the new presence.

Harry ignores him, too, and Ev would have his head for it, he knows. She’s the only one who can get away with being a little snarky to guests because it’ll only take her a couple of seconds to win them over again. Harry’s not so great at that.

“Are you from around here?” the guy asks, out of the blue while Harry’s wiping down the sticky edges of the bar.

“No,” Harry replies indifferently. His lip twitches when the guy blinks at him and watches Harry move around the bar with practice and ease.

“Right,” the guy says, tapping his pen to his lips. He’s got an angular face and light eyes, greasy hair that’s a little mussed, probably from leaning his forehead against his palm. He points the pen to Harry. “I think I’ve seen you around, though, the last couple of days.”

“I doubt that,” Harry says, raising a slow brow.

“In Louth,” the guy clarifies. Harry's expression flattens.

“You’re obviously not from around here,” he diverts. It isn’t hard to tell, even before Harry got a look at the details, the designer jeans and the white shoes already stained red around the edges, the general flustered air that surrounds someone in an unfamiliar environment. Harry doesn’t know what this guy’s deal is, and he isn’t sure he wants to find out.

“It seems we’re both amazingly observant,” the guy says, unswayed by Harry’s shortness. Harry lets out a humourless chuckle at that. It’s cut off by Ev, who rounds the bar like a bull and hits Harry playfully upside the head with a dishcloth.

“I told you to be back early,” she says, hand on hip. “And how many times do I have to tell you not to clean up after me?”

“It’s out of love,” Harry says innocently, going soft and sweet when her cross expression doesn’t waver. She can never stay mad at him, though, and a smile starts to show through the cracks when he comes closer, whispering _Ev, Evie, Ev-el-yn_ under his breath.

“Cheeky terror,” she scolds. “Maybe I _should_ send you home.”

“ _No_ ,” Harry cries dramatically. He pulls her into a clumsy hug. “You’re stuck with me forever.”

“What a shame,” Ev sighs. She pushes Harry away gently and gives him another stern once over. “You should head up to bed, lovie, ‘specially if you’re up early to get back to Molly’s.”

It’s quiet inside, jukebox down low now that Ev’s ready to pack up. From the kitchen, the dull metallic ring of the dishwasher ebbs through the old walls, muffled voices floating through cracks. Ned’s footsteps are audible as he stomps around upstairs.

“I should give her a ring,” Harry says, tugging at his bottom lip. He can’t help but think of her; he always does at this time of night. She’ll be able to hear the cattle now that they’re so close to the house, and the heifer—

“She’ll be just fine,” Ev says gently. She squeezes Harry’s hip. “Molly’s a tough cookie.”

Harry tugs at his lips again, distant. There’s this pull at his heart, a string that’s being wound back south, this innate need to check up on her, and then to go home, to hear the comfort of the radio and stop the shadows in the kitchen from shifting to that strange blue. It’s always just a seed of a thought planted in his chest, but once it settles in the soil he’s never able to stop it from growing. He won’t be able to sleep.

His neck prickles, the floating silence of the pub coming back to him as he blinks, and when he flicks his eyes from the floor, to Ev, and to the side, he’s met with another too-curious gaze.

“Something I can help you with, mate?” Harry says. He tries not to snark in front of Ev, but his voice comes out strange and short. He’s still stuck in his head. He pours himself a new schooner to distract himself, glass slightly warm from the washer. Ev glances at him but doesn’t say a word when he takes a long sip.

“Sorry. I know it’s rude to eavesdrop,” the man says, but doesn’t seem at all phased. “What exactly do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Why.”

“I guess I’m just trying to get my bearings,” the man says. There’s still a pen poised between his fingers, that old notebook propped open along the sticky bartop. Harry stares down at it, then slowly brings his eyes back up.

“I farm cotton.”

The way the stranger's expression brightens has Harry shifting uncomfortably. Beside him, Ev does the same. She’s being unusually quiet, arms crossed lightly over her chest as she watches their exchange, but she begins to coil up a little as the man starts to write a new note down when he speaks again.

“And your property is in Louth?”

“Yes.”

“How far down?”

“About an hour and a half from here. South.”

“Maybe you could help me,” the man says, looking up from his notebook with a glint in his eye. “I’m wanting to interview Molly Robertson. Do you know her?”

Harry stares. The low ebb of the pub is like static. Beside him, Ev lets out a slow, self-calming breath.

The stranger mistakes their hostile silence for misunderstanding, looking between them quickly. “I’m a journalist,” he explains, a palm to his chest.

“You’re a long way from home, darl,” Ev comments.

“Well, that’s exactly it,” the man says. Harry takes a slow sip of his beer and tries not to laugh bitterly into the gold liquid at the misplaced, clueless enthusiasm. “I’ve come up from Richmond.”

“La-di- _da_ ,” Harry hums, and the man’s gaze cuts quickly to him, mouth flattening. “City kid, huh? This must be a grand ol’ adventure for you.”

“Harry,” Ev mutters, warning.

“What do you want Molly for, then?” Harry continues.

The man blinks at him, unfazed and lofty now, defensive when he crosses his arms and stares Harry down. “To ask her about Pat Robertson.”

Stillness, and silence. Ev sighs and gently places her dishcloth on the bench, eyes ducked. Harry clenches his jaw.

“I’m really not trying to—. To be disrespectful, in any way,” the stranger rushes. “I haven’t had any luck in contacting her. I just want to know about the drought, and what it’s doing to the people here. We have so much to learn, and what’s happening to your properties is—”

“What, your stage three water restriction isn’t enough?” Harry says icily. “You had to come up and see how we’re _really_ roughin’ it in the outback, did you?”

“That’s not—”

“You’ve come a long way for nothing, mate,” Harry says. His hands are shaky and sore, the exhaustion of the day starting to wash over him in waves, and right now he can’t keep the pent up anger at bay, not when there’s some fresh-faced ponce sitting at their bar, asking to shove their nose where they don’t belong.

“Who do you write for?” Ev asks.

The man glares at Harry a moment longer, then slowly slides his gaze back to Ev, seeming to calm himself with a breath. “Right now, _The Age._ ”

Ev raises her brows. “They really forked out enough to send you up here?”

“They didn’t fork out anything. I’m the one who pushed the project.” the man says. He shrugs and ducks his head, tearing at the corner of a page in his notebook. “I’m the newbie there, more of an intern than anything. Just bedding in, y’know? Gotta sharpen my teeth someh—”

“Molly won’t be talking to any journalists.” Harry puts his beer down firmly on the bar, voice like a whip as the words slowly register. He feels sick at that, the fact that this guy thinks he can use this, use _Molly_ , to impress some suit that he works for. Not fucking happening.

“I really think it would be a great way to—”

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying, mate. There’s nothing _great_ about any of this.”

“Now you’re just twisting my words, _mate_.”

“Hey,” Ev snaps, cutting between them. Harry glares and grips the edge of the bar to steady himself. There’s sweat stuck along his jaw and the air is stuffy and he’s had enough. He’s had enough. “What’s your name?”

“Louis.”

“Why are you here?” Ev says. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest, round face set into pure scrutiny beneath her calm exterior, and Harry would know that look anywhere, a mum with too much experience weaseling the truth out of anyone.

“Because I want somebody to give a shit,” Louis says, flicking a nervous glance in Harry’s direction. “It’s too easy for people to just skim a statistic in the paper before they bloody fan themselves with it. I want to write something that’ll make people really care. It’s too good of a story to just let go of.”

 _This isn’t a fucking story_ , Harry thinks, jaw clenched to hold himself back, to stop himself spitting the words.

“Harry will ask Molly for you, love,” Ev says.

Harry balks, head whipping to face her. “ _Ev—_ ”

“That would be brilliant, thank you,” Louis says, smiling. The way he blatantly ignores Harry, face serene, only makes Harry fume. His fingers curl up painfully.

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” he grits out.

“Harry,” Ev says, and just with a word and a look Harry can read her tone. _The sooner you ask, the sooner he’ll pack up and make tracks._ Harry rolls his eyes. “You’ll ask Molly tomorrow morning once you’re back on the farm, okay?”

“Fine,” Harry huffs, a laugh of disbelief as he pushes away from the bar and tips the remainder of his beer into the sink, which he instantly regrets. What a waste. “ _Fine_.”

He puts the glass into the rack amongst the rest, too aggressive with it, sending them chiming as they clink and rattle together. He’s too mad to talk, to think about anything other than getting out as he rounds the bar, static and his own pulse rushing up to his head.

“Where are you going?” Ev calls out, and when Harry turns to face her a longing so strong thumps deep in his chest. Dishcloth in hand, palm to her hip, she’s the stern mother he never had. And now he can’t stop pushing her away.

“I don’t know,” Harry says. They stare at each other across the stretch of the pub. “Don’t wait up for me.”

When he pushes outside, all that greets him is the dry, dark heat.

-

As suspected, he hardly sleeps. Stretched out on his back on the old couch, Pippa snuffling in her sleep on the floor beside him, he dabs intermittently at the sweat under his eyes and spends the night fighting off nightmares. The smell of left-over candle residue seems to permeate deep into his pores.

Morning always comes too soon, the old radio clock beeping at five as the first strips of sun start to peek up over the horizon. Pippa is less than impressed when he gently nudges her awake. She allows him only a few minutes of coddling before she’s padding downstairs to scratch at the door. He wades through the dark to let her out, and when he reaches the top of the stairs again, Ev is waiting at the opening of the hall with her arms over her chest and a thin dressing gown thrown atop her pajamas.

They hug wordlessly. It’s still dark inside, barely a blush of red framing the curtains, and Harry hunches his shoulders away from the impending day, his forehead down against the warm, familiar heat of her neck instead. Her thumbs draw shapes along his shoulder blades. It never matters how quiet he is when he stays. She always seems to know when he wakes up.

This time around, though, things are different, heavier, and he makes sure he doesn’t let go first. He lets her have him, just for now. For the first time in a month.

“Come on, lovie,” Ev whispers, palm on his back as she guides him towards the kitchen.

They pack away Harry’s groceries into an esky and various cooler bags, frozen tupperware full of food slotted amongst ice. His forehead is heavy, eyes gritty and sore like he’s already been outside and the dust has started to cling to the dewy sweat of his eyelids. There’s an ache in his back, too. The mushy old couch is a cloud compared to the stiff, spring-bound mattress at his own place. He tries not to wince as he carries the first esky downstairs and hauls it up into the back of the truck.

Outside, with the horizon-line peeking through the gaps of housing, rusting the old fences in burgundy, Ev crouches to pet Pippa behind the ears while Harry ropes up the bags. Bourke is silent, not a whisper as the sun rises, not a breath, all waiting in anticipation for another sweltering, too-bright day.

The stillness before the sky shatters and goes blue is the only place they can find any sense of calmness anymore, the place where things don’t quite yet seem real. Here, shadowed in dawn, dust hazing everything like a fire-shot fog, they can pretend.

“Come back tonight, okay? Please?” Ev murmurs to him when he’s all packed up. Harry hugs her tight and nods. They’re both still grumpy with each other, he knows, but he just tries to breathe past the lingerings of the night before, to remind himself that she needs him, too. “Love you.”

“Love you,” he whispers back.

“And tell your dad we all love him, too,” Ev says. Her palm flattens over his back, a few gentle rubs. “It’d be nice to hear from him.”

“I will,” Harry promises.

When he pulls away from the pub, Pippa with her head out the passenger side window, he tries not to glance at the rearview mirror, where he knows Ev stays where she is until he’s out of sight.

He rubs at his dry eyes, licks his dry lips. Dust trails behind him when he pulls out onto the main road, shadows slanting like tar-spills.

He hits the highway. Pure light finally breaks over the horizon.

-

It’s late when he gets to Molly’s, sun halfway to it’s perch for the day, and the calves are waiting restlessly at the gate of the pen when he drives the truck in, the back now free from the bags and the esky, packed up in his own kitchen at home. It had been a duck in and out, hauling as many bags as he could a time up and into the cupboards and the fridge. He still feels guilty when the calves mewl at him.

Bella is by the corner again, but it looks like she’s shifted. Molly’s been coming out to check on her here and there, making sure she’s standing and getting her legs to move, but she stares numbly up at him when he wades through the tightly packed, excitable little heard of calves that crowd him.

“Sorry, sorry,” he whispers to her when she lunges for the bottle. He’s only a half-hour out of the time he usually feeds them, but with the heat pounding down they’re restless. He grits his teeth and avoids their shiny eyes.

It’s a long, exhausting process, and it never seems to appease them. Harry knows they need pellets now. They’re getting too old to just stay on milk. He just tries not to think about it, to help Molly hold off for as long as they can before it starts to become too dangerous for the calves. Before they start to get sick.

He has to take a moment to rest once the calves have eaten, sitting with his back against an old trough and his hat tilted low over his face to shield it from the sun. Out the corner of his eye, he can see Pippa and Jada chasing each other in circles around the house, kicking up dirt. He watches them idly while the sweat along his neck dissipates. New droplets bead along his hairline.

It’s only when Bella starts to shift and nudge at him, back quivering under his palm, that he breaks from his reverie to help her stand on wobbly legs, knobby joints protruding from skin as she hop-skips awkwardly towards the rest of the calves, joining in with their quiet huddle. That’s an improvement, at least. He allows himself a smile as he passes them on his way out, running his hands up over her ears comfortingly.

He meets Molly out on the paddock. Any calmness he previously felt dissipates, replaced instead by a twisting knot, firm at the pit of his stomach. Lingering still is the frustration from last night’s conversation. Molly turns to him with an open smile when he gets out of the truck, Pippa shooting out behind him, and knowing that he’s about to ask her to do something she’d never want to do seems like a genuine act of turpitude. It’s the very thing they all tried to avoid just a month prior. 

“How was your night?” she asks, squeezing his hip when he pulls her into a one armed hug. They stand side by side together and squint out into the dust. The cattle are still, heads lowered and ears flapping against flies. Frozen this way they look like rocks carved and marbled from wind, their ribs jagged ridges.

Harry lowers his eyes. “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” Molly hums. She squeezes him again, higher up this time where she knows he’s got a ticklish spot. “How is everyone?”

“Good, Mol,” Harry says. Molly glances up at him, smiles in that soft, wayward way, and it wedges that indomitable sadness right between his chest and stomach. That look in her eyes—the distance and the obvious guilt—hurts to see. He just wants it to go away. “Ev and Ned force-fed me.”

Molly laughs knowingly and looks back to the paddock. “That doesn’t surprise me one bit. Wouldn’t be a proper visit if they didn’t leave you full as a goog.”

“Like you can talk,” Harry teases gently, grinning when she squints up at him. “I reckon you’ve given me enough sugar over the years to put holes in my teeth. Dad could never figure out why I was so wired up every time we’d drive home after dinner.”

“Our little secret,” Molly says, and her squint morphs into a warm, wistful smile. She leans her head on his shoulder.

Harry looks back out to the paddock. It’s quiet for a long time, just the low buzz of heat and the shuffle of the cattle as they sway gently, the intermittent zip of flies searching for damp sweat along their necks. The weight of it is always physical, like the sun is crawling right up close and licking at his skin, sneaking smoldering fingers under the hem of his shirt and warming its palms along his spine. Hot pressure, that burning behind the ears and the tops of his shoulders.

“Mol,” he says carefully, closing his eyes for a moment. “There was a man last night, at the bar.”

Molly doesn’t say anything, just waits, and that almost makes it harder. They’ve always trusted each other so much, stuck together like little peas in a pod. This is mistrust in the worst of ways, in ways he never wanted to repeat.

“He wants to interview you,” Harry says slowly, words like sludge over his tongue.

“What about?” Molly asks, looking up to him. Harry glances down at her and has to look away. It’s too close like this, and he can see the lines by her mouth, can see the fine speckles in her doe-like eyes.

“Pat,” Harry says bluntly, because if he doesn’t get it out that way it simply won’t come out at all.

Molly says nothing. When Harry braves looking at her, she’s gone back to staring out at the cattle. Harry wishes he’d held her gaze, and hates himself in the moment he realizes he really should have. She deserves better. The silence stretches on, but he can feel the gentle twist of her fingers in the fabric of his shirt, the slow shift of her feet.

“You can obviously say no, just like we did before,” Harry says, finally. “He was from Melbourne, one of those city blokes just wanting to impress his suits. Apparently travelled a long way. Writes for _The Age_. He was honestly pretty rude—”

“I think I’ll talk to him.”

Harry blinks against the sunlight. “You…what?”

“Maybe it’d…” Molly trails off, shrugging and curling into herself a little. “Maybe it’d help. To finally talk.”

“Molly, trust me. This guy—he’s just here for the story.” He’s suddenly overcome with the need to steer her away. “He’s no good.”

“Well, why’d you tell me then?” Molly says sharply.

Harry balks a little, skin prickling at the hurt in her eyes. They haven’t found an easy way to talk about it, and he doesn’t think they’ll ever find one. But the skirting, the frog-leaps over what they really need to say, it only leaves these pitfalls of hurt and misunderstanding, these places they can’t fill up once they’ve taken the jump.

“I—. Ev thought I should,” Harry says, but it’s a weak fumble for an excuse, and Molly just looks more hurt. He regrets the words immediately. “He’s been hanging around for a few days. Maybe if we talk to him, he’ll finally go.”

“I thought they’d all finished their little spree weeks ago.” Molly sighs. “This one’s a bit late. At least he had some decency to ask instead of just showing up to the house unannounced.”

Harry tucks her closer. It’s so bright out, and the dust on the ground looks flushed bone-white, the dry shrub hollow and paper thin. It's between his teeth, under his nails, this itch that just won’t go away. Molly turns to him slowly and tucks her face into his chest.

“I’d like to meet the fella first,” she says quietly. “Make sure he’s not going to slander Pat’s memory. If he gets anything out of me at all.”

“I’d never let that happen,” Harry says, throat gone thick when she sniffs. With her face tucked away the sun hits the crown of her head, grey hair lit up like live-wire. Harry wraps her in a firm hug.

He wonders what they’d look like from afar, two specks on a flat plane of emptiness. By the time they part, Molly's face is composed and firm, any remnants of tears dried up, but that gauntness, that grief, it settles low and quiet in her eyes as she finally breaks from Harry’s side.

Harry watches her cross the paddock silently, wanting nothing more than to twist time back.

-

The farm is still and silent when he pulls in late. He has to take a moment to pause once he’s shoved the truck door open, feet touching the ground like he’s walking on the moon. The vacuum atmosphere has him waiting for the grains to float mid-air, steps weightless, the spread of dirt all ghostly. Space dust. Swallowing, he licks the dryness of his lips and lets the door close behind him, eyes to the ground.

Inside, he hangs his hat by the door and shakes out his hair. The floorboards moan under his feet. He can hear the gentle _scitch-scitch_ of Pippa’s nails as she trots from room to room, nosing along the skirting in search of faeries and dust to chase. The walls of the entryway look like they’re about to close in, so he toes off his boots and shuffles into the kitchen, sighing gently once the familiar crackle of the radio reaches his ears, still perched on the windowsill.

The curtain above the sink is drawn, air stuffy and thick. The little house has been shut up like a hot box for the past day. With achy hands he lets the light in, hips leant against the cool benchtop so he can reach the string. With all that sun coming in, hot and bright and fervent, Harry drags one of the kitchen stools over to the bench and sits with his legs pressed awkwardly to the cupboards.

He reaches for the telephone. Closes his eyes for a moment.

_‘You have one new voicemail message. Message received—twenty-second of February, twelve-fifteen p.m.’_

A beep.

_“Hey, kid. It’s me.”_

Harry stares resolutely out the window.

_“Sorry I haven’t called the past couple of days. I figured you’d be busy, anyway, but…no, I’m sorry. I should’ve called. I think we both know that. Anyway, it’s—. It’s so bloody hot here, all this damn concrete, y’know? But we saw some rain last night. Can you believe it? Summer rain. I almost ran out onto the bloody street, kid. They reckon it might pick up over the next week, so keep the radio on, yeah? Always keep it on, and have a listen to the news. It’s going to get better. I promise, kid.”_

Underneath it all there’s a quiet bustle, phones ringing, the pitter-patter of feet, soft chatter. In the pause, he can hear Dad breathing down the line, bated and hesitant. Harry picks at the chipped edge of the bench, posture stooped so he can rest his elbow there.

_“And I miss you. I wish I could be there for you and Pip and Molly. I know it’s—. I know it’s been hard. But it’s for the best, and I know that you know that. Give me a ring soon, kid. Tell me how they’re all doing. Them rowdy lot better be asking after me, you tell them that.”_

He startles when Pippa nudges her face into his leg. He rests a hand under her chin while he listens.

_“I’ll talk to you later, okay? Take care of yourself. Please.”_

There’s that pause again, the dull muffle of someplace far away.

_“Bye, H.”_

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring out into the fields. Pippa curls up on the tile beside him, breaths even, and Harry tries to match his own with hers, lining them up to become one. Mechanically, he rises, pours himself a glass of water, and sits back down.

Dials the number.

As the phone rings, he glances up at the clock on the wall. It goes to voicemail.

“Hey,” he starts, then stops, suddenly feeling like all the air is caught in his throat. He digs his nail into the chipped bench again, closing his eyes against the pricking of splinters. “Hey, Dad. I, um. I’m really sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. I was busy out with Molly, and I went to see Ev and Ned. They all send their love.”

He’s never felt quite so fragile, like a gentle breeze could splinter his ribs. Just one flimsy flick away from caving in like a stack of cards built too high. He runs a hand through his hair.

“Things are fine. I’m—fine. It’s still dry across this way, but the cattle seem like they’re holding up for now. We moved them down, so. We can hang in there for a little longer.”

Aimlessly, he looks back out through the window, to where the arid land rests flat, afternoon sun starting to haze everything in honey, sticky and weighted. As he pinches lightly at the bridge of his nose, he tries to conjure up something to say that isn’t what he really means, something other than the truths threatening to break loose. He doesn’t want to burden Dad with it now, not when they’re both so far away, when they’re supposed to be taking the time to be better.

“I miss you, too,” Harry says roughly. Below, Pippa begins to nose along the arch of his foot, small eyes like little pools when he glances down at her. She blinks up at him warmly. “Pippa goes out in the mornings to look for you. I think she misses you, too. Everyone does.”

Harry wonders what Dad will hear in these pauses, the same way Harry heard that unfamiliar hum, emphasizing their distance. He isn’t sure what would hurt more, the familiarity or the unknown; just that it’s going to hurt them both. Always does. He wipes a slow hand down the side of his face.

“I have to go. I’ll talk to you soon,” he says. _Please come home. I’m scared, even though I can’t admit it. I don’t know what to do._ “Bye.”

After, he sits with his head in his hands for a long time, light warming the ridges of his fingers, knuckles burning hot where they face the sun. He can’t let it overwhelm him, not now. With a sigh, he stretches his head up and rubs at the underside of his jaw, around his neck where a new ache is settling, a phantom pull from the plushy give of the couch at the pub.

Along the top of the blinds old cards hang from a piece of worn twine. Harry blinks up at them, hands stilling their movements as he flicks his eyes across each one, the fine glitter and the balloons and the bears, the cards that repeat three times over because they’re all from the same newsagent. Slowly, he reaches up to unhook one end of the string, and lets the cards flutter down as it comes loose, casting odd shadows and cutting through the light as they do so. It’s time.

He doesn’t hang onto them the same way he did as a boy, but often, he wonders if he should. He remembers those drawers stacked to the brim full with cards and envelopes, glitter stuck all around the edges. They’d grow faded and dirty and crinkled, but still he’d keep them all, hoarded them each year and then forgot about them until the next birthday came around, only to discover this goldmine of pleasantry and love all over again, sifting through and holding them all up against his chest. To feel so full, so loved, time and time again.

Much like _Cloudstreet_ on the dash, the cards before him are sun-bleached and faded now, strung up with their backs to the harsh light for weeks. There are different coloured pens, slants of handwriting, the same cheesy message pressed to the centre over and over. He doesn’t know how he went from feeling joy at that affection to feeling hollow staring down at fake cursive print, or when that transition happened. What once was a treasure, a secret kept safe, now lies in front of him as nothing more than paper and pen.

When the cards settle, Harry thumbs at the edge of one and sighs deeply, hooking his fingers into the margin and pressing it open. He reads them all, one by one, _Dear Harry_ smudging the top corner of each card. He barely remembers reading them in the first place, not a trace of that whimsy, childlike exhilaration anywhere to be found.

Yellow light touches the edges of his vision. The sun is coming down behind the house, seeping around the veranda all lazy and bright. Harry reaches for the last card hesitantly, reading over the careful cursive there, the little paragraph slotted over the generic phrase in the centre.

He presses his thumb against the small _Love, Molly_ that rests at the bottom. It's glaringly bare without the rest of their names next to hers, and his spine prickles even now, reading over it. The way he stands is sudden, chair scraping as he bundles the cards up roughly into his arms. Pippa startles and skids away when Harry crosses the room.

He dumps the cards into the bin and slams the lid closed. His pulse starts to thud in his ears, a rush of blood, a shaky heat. Jaw clenched, he puts hands on his hips and looks to his side, where Pippa is blinking at him curiously from behind a dining room chair, tail still wagging back and forth despite his sudden skittishness.

She comes when he gestures for her. He slides down to the floor and lets her into his lap, the two of them leant together along the cupboards, watching the shadows slant in.

-

It’s growing dark as he heads back to Bourke. He watches the minute tick of the fuel gage as he goes, dust flying up behind the truck and rattling the sides of the bed. He’s white-knuckled and strung tight, already dreading what’s to come, and almost tempted to turn back home, more than ready to resign himself to a spend the night lying spread atop the sheets, flipping the pillow each time the heat becomes too much.

He’s angry with Ev, angry with everything around them, angry with himself, fuming that he can’t seem to make up his mind; whenever he wants to be alone he has to be seen, and whenever he’s alone he wishes that he wasn’t.

But then he gets to the pub and lets himself through the back, gets a gentle pat on the back from the chefs and sees Jai by the sink, slinks through the door to the bar and sees Ev with her head thrown back, laugh booming out across the room as she talks to one of the older townsfolk, the whole bar under her attention as she no doubt tells a wild story, reels them in for another drink. And Harry is flooded with guilt, that anger dissipating as quick and fierce as it came, replaced by the weight of shame, because he needs to get it into his thick fucking skull that this isn’t just about him. They’re all in this together right now. He’s still acting like the child he wishes he was, but that boy is gone to the wind and he can’t keep this up. He can’t.

“Ev,” Harry calls softly, when the chatter at the bar starts to settle and Ev turns to stack up a tower of dirty glasses. She glances up at his voice, and he can tell she’s still upset with him. Her surprised glance at his presence doesn’t slip past him. The guilt doubles at that look, the fact that Ev thought he wouldn’t come by at all. That he could just leave her.

She doesn’t respond, instead turning back to the bar and rinsing out dirty mats. Harry watches her profile, the thin twist of her mouth, hair falling from it’s messy updo. Slowly, he coddles up behind her and wraps his arms over her waist. He leans into her gently.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Ev reaches up and pats lightly at his cheek. Harry closes his eyes, breathing slow. She’s always just trying to take care of him, he knows, more than ever now.

“Still my baby,” she hums. Harry sighs into her neck, the scent there so familiar. She’s always been such a warm presence to him, a little sunspot for him to chase and catch and hold close against his chest. So many of the memories he has growing up have been with her and Ned, the two of them babysitting when Dad just couldn’t keep up on the farm, the nights spent sitting on the silver counters while Ned cooked in the kitchen, so much smaller back in Louth before they moved up to Bourke.

Silently, they settle into routine. He helps Ev set up the rest of the bar for the night, washes her dishes and polishes everything and puts it all back in its place. He accepts handshakes and _hey, mate_ and _how’s your old man?_ from people he hasn’t seen in what feels like forever, the older blokes that he and Dad have had out helping on the farm before, families that’ve been interwoven in his life for as long as he can remember.

It should help him relax more, the familiar faces and the kindness, but instead that guilt continues to manifest, settling at the pit of his stomach like an ever-growing rock.

Jai sticks his head around the corner at seven. Harry follows him outside.

The aircon has been blasting in the pub and stepping out is a submergence into pool water, warm and gluggy, sticky like chlorine. The earth is cherry red and glowing hot, as smooth as glass, magnifying the heat of everything beneath it. Harry kicks up the dirt as they trail along the side of the brick. Jai lights up beside him and exhales with a sigh.

They rest silently for a while. Smoke billows up around their heads. Half of Harry’s face is burning hot, the other sweating and coddled in damp shadows.

“Let me finish it,” he says, when Jai’s cig starts to flicker down to almost nothing. Jai glances sideways. “C’mon. Please.”

“But Ev said—”

“What?” Harry snaps. “You too, Jai?”

“I’m allowed to care,” Jai mutters, thrusting the bud in Harry’s face. It’s been forever since he’s smoked, and the first inhale has his throat strung up tight. That dusty heat flowing down to his lungs where the air is already powdered and warm makes him cringe, but the exhale is better, like he’s tricked his body into thinking the rest of the world is cool and calm, nothing like the bitter smoke trailing out from his nose.

He smokes until the bud’s almost too small to hold. As he smudges it against the bricks, Jai finally looks his way again, terse and curious.

“Tilda and I were talking,” he says. Harry nods, waiting. “We were thinking of going for a drive over the weekend. Like old times, y’know?”

 _Old times._ Harry tries not to laugh bitterly when he thinks of it, the four of them squished amongst their bags and tents, exploring the red dirt to find new places that always ended up looking like altered versions of the world they already knew. _Sounds peachy_.

“Where to?”

“Don’t know yet,” Jai shrugs. Harry watches the way his fingers play with his belt loops, dipping intermittently into his pockets. He’s fidgeting, itching for another smoke. “Thought we’d just leave with the sun and see where it takes us.”

“I can’t,” Harry says, looking away. There isn’t much point trying to entertain the idea. “Molly and I are shifting paddocks. I think one of her heifers is about to go down.”

“That’s too bad,” Jai says. He kicks a rock, a careless swing of his leg. Harry watches it skid across the dirt.

All he can smell is smoke and heat, and that shouldn’t be possible, to smell something that doesn’t really have a scent, but the warmth is so present here, their bodies splayed against the bricks like they’re waiting for their skin to shrivel up, for their insides to melt. Maybe that’s what he can smell.

“It’s so fucking hot,” Jai says. 

“Yeah.”

“I fucking hate it.”

Harry stares down at his feet and listens to Jai fumble with another cigarette.

-

With the NAB cup on, the telly blasts at full volume inside. The Swans are three points up on the Bulldogs and it’s two minutes to halftime. Predictably, the pub’s in shambles, all the patrons pushing their chairs and tables to the centre of the room, Ned in the middle of it all decked out in red and white. The nervous tick to his right leg is another hole in the wall waiting to happen. There’s an uproar at a turnover, calls of _ball, that’s holding the fuckin’ ball!_

Harry sits and observes from the edge of the bar. Tucked away in the corner, he eats his parma silently. The siren sounds, and like a stampede the bar is alight with activity for those who can afford it, Jai and Ev moving fast, the liquid buzz of beer on tap filling the gaps between rapid, exhilarated chatter. It’s the standard for a Friday night here, what must be most of Bourke’s working men squished in to watch the game together. There are only a few places left in this town that can remain untouched by reality, if only for a few hours, a few times a week. This is one of them.

Harry bites down on a smile when Ned sends a drunken wink his way, waving his scarf in the air and reclaiming his centre position to watch the halftime show.

Harry turns back to his parma, and like appearing from thin air, the next time he looks up Louis has taken the seat adjacent to him. Their knees knock together. Harry grits his teeth and shifts away, crowding his elbows in. Any trace of ease leaves him immediately. Across the room, he glances at Ev. Of course, she’s already watching back, a silent mediator to whatever is about to pass between the two of them.

“How was your day?” Louis starts with. The genial greeting means little to Harry once Louis puts his notebook down between them. Harry chews slowly as he glances at it, then back up to Louis’ placid face.

“Fine,” he says shortly, stabbing at his salad.

“Were you on the farm?”

Right to it, then.

“Yeah.”

“Did you talk to Molly?”

Harry dips a wedge of tomato into his gravy and examines it for a moment, really drawing it out just to watch Louis’ composure waver, clearly unimpressed when Harry shoves the wedge into his mouth. He chews thoughtfully.

“Yeah.”

Louis’ shoulders wind up with further tension. “ _And?_ ”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you about anything until she meets you,” Harry says. He swallows. “And gets to know you.”

“Oh,” Louis says, deflating slightly. “That makes sense. Could I meet her tomorrow?”

Harry rolls his eyes, laughing under his breath. “What's the rush? Got somewhere more important to be?”

“No,” Louis says patiently. “But if you really need to know, my expenses aren’t paid by _The Age_ and I’m still paying rent back home, so—”

Harry huffs another disbelieving laugh, louder this time, and pushes his plate away.

“Oh, what?” Louis says. Harry shakes his head. “ _What?_ ”

“Nothing.”

They watch each other sharply, and that’s the right word, Harry’s sure of it. Everything about Louis is like that, cutting, light eyes and thin hair and a sloping jaw, pure vulpine countenance as he stares Harry down. The game is still going on behind them, the bar alight with shouting and laughter and clinking glasses, but here they’re trapped in a diaphanous bubble of disagreement. Harry is sure that if he pricks it with a pin, the evaporating particles will crackle as they separate.

“Look,” Louis exhales evenly. “I’m trying to help you, mate. Let’s just organize a time for me to meet here with Molly, and I’ll be out of your hair. Simple. Let’s say tomorrow?”

“We’re too busy to let work go on the farm,” Harry says, unmoved by Louis’ attempts at diffusion. “And you’re kidding yourself if you think I’m going to drive back and forth over and over. I don’t have that kind of money to waste on fuel. Not for this. Not for you.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Louis bursts irately. “Follow you around on a bloody tractor?”

Harry clenches his jaw, and finally, Louis balks a little under his gaze. It's at this point that Ev must see the steady downward spiral the conversation is traveling along, because she chooses that moment to cut between them, placing a schooner beside Harry and pushing his half-finished plate back towards him. _Be quiet. That’s enough. Finish your dinner._ Harry rolls his eyes and cuts into his now-cold parma.

“Where are you staying, darl?” Ev asks.

“The B&B up the road,” Louis says. “I’m just renting a room there for now.”

Ev hums thoughtfully. Too thoughtfully. “Harry, you’ve got a spare couch, don’t you.”

It isn’t a question. Harry lowers his fork and gives Ev a look, shaking his head minutely.

“I… _really_ wouldn’t want to overstep,” Louis says slowly, looking between them, almost shrinking away at the idea.

 _Too late_ , Harry thinks bitterly.

“If you’re in Louth, driving back and forth between Molly’s won’t cost nearly as much. Harry makes that trip every morning,” Ev says, matter-of-fact and firm between them both. She turns to Harry. “You could do with the company at least, lovie.”

“ _Evelyn_ ,” Harry grits out, heat gathering around his neck. He pushes away his plate fiercely. She’s supposed to be on his side. _Their_ side. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“Harry.” Ev is stern, and she’s giving him that motherly look again. “This could really help Molly, just having somebody to talk to about it.”

“ _I_ talk to her about it,” Harry bursts loudly, a hand to his chest. “She has _me,_ okay?”

Silence settles between them. Harry blinks as he tries to reel himself back. He feels so suddenly like an out of turn child, swallowing down the watery tightness that threatens his chest when Ev’s face softens.

“Maybe she needs something separate,” she says carefully. “It can’t hurt to try. And who knows, some good might come of it. You both need the help.”

Harry scratches at his elbow and keeps his eyes resolutely on the bartop. Louis has been unusually silent, and Harry only flushes further under the prickle of his gaze. It's like he's prodding and prying already, sneaking into the gaps he shouldn’t fill. Harry spares a glance at Louis and expects to see resentment and snide eyes, but instead there’s only caution; Harry can’t tell if it’s directed towards the situation, or towards Harry himself.

“Fine…” Harry exhales, cutting his gaze away. “But you can’t get in our way with the cattle. I mean it.”

“I won’t.”

“Do you need a hand packing up your things?” Ev says, looking relieved as the air around them finally starts to calm.

“I’ll be fine.” Louis waves her off. “I hired a dinky rental and half of my stuff is still shoved in the backseat, so. It’s no problem.”

“Right, well…” Ev trails off, and Harry finally meets her eye, mouth pulled into a firm line. Ev just gives him another one of those looks.

_Be nice._

_I’ll try._

_Be there for Molly._

_I will._

-

Night has settled when they finally get back to Louth. Just a red strip remains on the horizon, dusk gasping out it’s last hot breath and leaving the air dry and unbearable despite the late hour. Dust rattles through his lungs in chaotic tandem with the truck on the rough road. He can’t stop looking up in the rearview mirror.

Louis trails behind them in a beaten Barina, headlights flashing. Pippa is restless beside Harry in the passenger seat, full of energy and scraps from Ned, eager and excited by the prospect of having somebody new to play with. She won’t stop shifting in her seat, letting out little whines and staring into the wing mirrors.

It’s silent when Harry pulls in through the gates and shuts off the truck. The slow crunch of Louis’ tires, a sound like splintering glass, is out of place.

Harry leaves the headlights of the Hilux on until they tread inside. They’re silhouetted in artificial white as they pull Louis’ bags from the boot, tension thick between them. Harry refuses to say anything right now, mainly because he’s afraid of what might come out if he opens his mouth. Louis’ got a sturdy leather case strapped over his shoulder, and he blows his fringe gently out of his eyes as he surveys what he can see of their surroundings, the barren, flat fields and the looming shadows of the sheds in the near distance, Pippa running eager circles back and forth along the veranda.

Harry wedges open the flywire door and flicks on the light.

It’s dusty yellow, weak. The bulbs barely brush the edges of the tiny kitchen and dining room, and he shifts further inside to flick on the light in the lounge and the rest of the hallway. Each room is encapsulated in it’s own tiny pocket, one never quite brushing the other, like they’re all held in by a delicate vignette, existing in their own little light bulbs, cupped by foggy glass.

The Robertson farmhouse is all wide hallways and white walls, sturdy with natural wood details, a peaked roof and white pickets and baby blues. Everything here is small in comparison, a tiny farmhouse built eons ago, thin metals and thinner wood and all of it edged with a vintage fuzz, that vinyl crackle personified out into a space. It’s modest, but it’s theirs. Dad always loved the character, the memories embedded into every chip and wear and tear.

Harry can’t help but watch as Louis’ things start to fill up the small living room, a jacket over the armchair, a small bag spilling out along the rug, his leather bag emptied onto the sheetless sofa-bed. It all seems a little too clean and out of place, and Louis himself is looking around curiously, head tilted to the side as he looks at the pictures on the walls and all the fine little details that make this house a home.

He must also be oblivious to the fact that Harry is watching him snoop, because he startles a little when he turns and notices Harry standing by the entryway, the last bag, almost weightless in its contents, still slung over his shoulder.

“Nice place,” Louis says woodenly, clearly for a lack of anything else to say. At least he seems as uncomfortable as Harry feels.

“Thanks.” Harry awkwardly lowers the bag to the floor and clears his throat. “Um, the bathroom is first on the right down the hall. I’ll get some towels out if you want to shower?”

“That’d be great.”

Harry nods, lingering and lost in his own home, before he sets off for the small linen cupboard in the hall. When he returns Louis has gone back to his careful inspection, reading the titles of the CDs stacked up high on the shelves.

“You have, like, every Paul Kelly CD ever made,” he muses when Harry comes closer.

Harry hugs the towels to his chest. “They’re my Dad’s. He’s obsessed with him.”

“Cool,” Louis says.

“Here.”

Harry holds out the towels, arms far outstretched to keep space between them. Louis finally turns back around.

“Thanks.”

“There’s, um. There’s a timer,” Harry explains as Louis reaches for the towels. “Try and keep it to under a minute if you can, though.”

“A minute?” Louis raises a brow. “It’s three back home.”

“Well, you’re not running off tank water back home,” Harry says. “So keep it short.”

Louis’ expression flattens. They’re both standing there with their arms out, a firm grip at either end of the towels. Harry finally relents and hands them off with a weary sigh.

“Any other rules I should know about?” Louis asks lightly.

 _Smartass._ Harry doesn’t take the bait. “There are sheets and some spare pillows in the closet. I’m going to bed. If you need anything just shout.”

“Sure.”

Harry brushes past him, and Louis moves towards the hall, both passing each other with their heads ducked. The exhaustion is pulling Harry down, now. The ache in his neck has almost become unbearable. He needs to strip down and sleep and forget about everything, press his face into the pillow and just disappear.

“Hey?” Harry glances back at the word, palm to the door of his bedroom. Louis lingers across from him at the entry to the hall, towels bundled up to his chest. “Thanks. Really.”

Harry attempts a smile before he finally shuffles into his room and nudges the door closed. He presses his fingers to his temples and rubs gently, inhaling long and slow. It's dusty and dry, and he realizes with a belated sigh that he’s managed to leave his window open. There’s an itch under his fingers as he closes the latch. He spends a few minutes neatening everything and brushing away dust, organizing the books on his shelf back into alphabetical order, throwing loose paper into the small recycling bin by the desk.

He flops into his unmade bed fully clothed. Like clockwork, he slowly kicks off his jeans, unbuttons his shirt, and pushes his hair away from his face. The sheets are bunched up under his skin. He stares out into the darkness for a while. Listens to the shower run and counts the seconds. Splayed out like this, his body starts it’s shut down almost right away, finally able to sink into a familiar bed, eager to rest. His alarm is already set, the radio whispering it’s dull tune by his ear, and absently he runs his fingers over the sharp bones of his hips, feels the gentle bruises there, the strain in his shoulders, mind drifting as his eyes finally close.

He’s not sure how much time passes, if he’s asleep or awake when he hears the creak of the flyscreen door. There’s no voice, not even the scatter of Pippa’s feet. Minutes pass before the lights dim again. The lock clicks back into place. Silence, finally, nature holding its breath until the sun comes up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we love some introductory exposition don't we...
> 
> first chapter done!! ur comments always mean the world to me so please feel free to leave some or come visit me over on [tumblr](https://harrybridgers.tumblr.com). thanks for reading, take care of each other. see u soon :)
> 
> ♡


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hii. thanks to everyone who left a comment/messaged me on tumblr/read the first chapter! greatly appreciated. hope u all like this one ♡

Harry has never had to hesitate through his mornings quite like this. Not for a long time.

A reluctance to rise as early as he does, yes. Exhaustion is always a given. A few more minutes spent with his eyes firmly shut is the norm. But not since boyhood has he stood by his bedroom door and been too scared to turn the knob.

He is fully dressed, the alarm silenced. Stuffy air fills the whole room up as the house starts to shrink itself under the pressure of early morning swelter. It’s still that dreamy kind of dark, nothing seeming real, but he knows that it’s time to go, to whistle for Pippa and eat whatever he’s got left in the fridge and start the drive down to Molly’s. 

He can’t seem to open the door. Maybe he doesn’t want to face it, this new thing, the danger, the thought of Molly’s tired, sunken eyes. Having Louis here feels like a betrayal. Harry tries not to think about what his Dad would have to say if he saw the journo sleeping on their pull-out, here to shake a settled sheet and watch the dust fly again.

Harry braces himself, parts the door just a crack, and peers out into the shadows of the living room. Through the grainy softness of russet sunrise against the curtains comes Louis’ quiet breathing. Even, steady. Harry swallows and lets the door fall closed carefully behind him.

Louis is still asleep, facedown with arms wrapped haphazard and almost childlike around the pillow he’s lying on. The wispy hair that curls from the crown of his head is in complete disarray. Just in his underwear and a thin shirt, his calves are exposed, the tangled sheets pushed down to the edge of the mattress during the night. It’s not surprising, not with the heat in the room and the sweat already shining off Louis’ skin, but Harry’s cheeks still warm as he catches himself in this moment of observation. He comes back to his senses and shuffles into the kitchen with his fingers tangled in the bottom of his shirt, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Pippa emerges from under the dining table.

She seems happy to see him, twining between his legs like a cat would. Harry feeds her and rubs behind her ears before he stands, stretches—and finally acknowledges the little blue light. He casts a wary eye across the hall. Nothing but stillness from the living room.

He drops four weet-bix into a bowl, wets them with milk, and pulls up a seat by the bench.

_‘You have one new voicemail message. Message received—twenty-third of February, eight-fifteen p.m.’_

A beep.

_“Hey, kid. It’s me again. I know you’re probably out right now, but I thought I’d try giving you a call. Nice to hear your voice. I’m glad everything’s going okay, but you know you can talk to me, right? You don’t have to leave your old man in the dark. Tough as nails, me. Ha. So I guess, uh. I guess I’ll talk to you later. Watch the tanks. I’m praying it’ll rain for you lot soon enough. Give me a ring when you can, mate. Bye.”_

Harry dials, squinting against the sunbeams that have titled in through the curtain slats, rising steadily. As the phone rings, he leans his chair back and glances briefly into the warm darkness again. No signs of movement yet.

The call goes all the way through to voicemail.

“Hey, Dad,” he starts, barely a whisper. “Sorry for calling so early. You’re probably still asleep, but, um. I’m gonna be busy today, so I thought I’d try to give you a call over brekkie. You don’t have to worry about me. You know I’d tell you if—. If anything happened.”

Right on cue, there’s a rustle from the lounge. Pippa’s ears perk up.

“I’ve gotta go,” he rushes out. “I’m running late, but I’ll try to call you later tonight. Bye.”

The phone clatters as he fumbles to put it back in place. Pippa glances up at him curiously. The wagging of her tail becomes an act of pure cheek the second he shakes his head at her. _No. Don’t you dare. Be good._ All it takes is one minute creak from the couch and she’s shooting off into the other room before Harry can grab her. Louis’ muffled sound of surprise as Pippa no doubt jumps on him, follows only seconds later.

Harry’s suspicions are confirmed when he rounds the corner. Louis is still on his side, laughing as Pippa sniffs at his face with her wet nose. She pokes it into his ear and he finally gives in, sitting up with eyes deep-set and half-ringed with darkness from what Harry guesses was a restless sleep.

“Pip, don’t be rude,” he says.

Pippa pays him absolutely no mind. Louis has offered her sleepy chin scratches and it’d be against her nature to resist indulging in that, even if Harry tells her no.

“She’s a pretty dog,” Louis says with a yawn, stretching and falling against the back of the couch.

“Pretty annoying,” Harry muses.

“You’re so very pretty aren’t you? Huh? _Huh!_ ” The pitched excitement of Louis’ voice has her restless. She burrows into his side and starts to mess up the sheets, looking for a roughhousing.

The jealousy is fleeting but nonetheless present. No doubt this is only the beginning of Louis’ encroachment, but unfortunately for him, Harry’s soft spot for Pippa doesn’t automatically translate to those who share that same fondness for her.

Harry whistles sharply for her to get down and she does so with a giddy leap, tucking herself against Harry’s legs for a scratch behind the ears before shooting off down the hall, most likely to go on a morning run around the property.

Without Pippa as a buffer, not even the heat seems weighted enough to connect the forced space between them. Louis’ shirt has become rucked up around his hips from his shifting, bare legs kicked completely out from under the sheets. Harry’s eyes draw up from the thin nubs of his ankles, the soft bulge in his underwear, the skin of his shoulder where his shirt has drooped — and is absolutely mortified to find Louis watching this sleepy dot-to-dot inspection take place.

Flushed, Harry cuts his gaze away.“Tea?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll just—” Harry gestures behind him and retreats. In the kitchen, he closes his eyes, curls his fingers into tight fists, then lets them relax. Breathes in slow, exhales slow.

Louis finally joins him; Harry’s gotten their cups ready, teabags and milk out. He stirs his own tea and flattens the bag against the side of the cup, Louis dropping two bags into his own. Hopefully he won’t get used to this hospitality. There’s not enough water for Harry alone to have a cuppa every morning. If all goes well, Louis won’t be around long enough to form any kind of expectation.

Side by side they stir, the clinking of cheap china awkwardly filling the silence.

Louis glances out the window.

“The light comes through so nice,” he says. He turns to Harry. “What time is it?”

“Just gone six.”

“Jesus.” Louis’ brows rise. “It feels later.”

“It always does,” Harry nods. “It starts to lighten up around five on the hot days.”

“Every day is a hot day.”

“Exactly.”

Harry leaves his tea-bags in, string looped around the handle, and takes a slow, calming slip.

“No cell service out here?” Louis asks, blowing over his tea. “I tried mine last night. Nada.”

“It’s pretty hard to come by,” Harry says. He can count the number of people he knows with a mobile on one hand. Theirs is kept in the truck for emergencies. Things must be different in the city. “You can use the phone here if you need to.”

“Probably should have expected that,” Louis says with a wry smile. “Thanks. Might give my housemate a call before we leave so he knows I’m still kicking.”

Harry nods and casts his eyes out to the sunrise. In the distance, Pippa is just a fast blur as she crosses the hazy fields. One tiny sunspot almost swallowed by the sharp morning glow. He’s a little lost in his thoughts when Louis toes at the bin pedal. The lid pops open with an abrasive _clank_ and Louis stares down into it, tea-bags hovering.

He tilts his head. “When was your birthday?”

Right. The cards.

Harry curls his fingers around his cup and holds it to his chest. “A few weeks ago. February first.”

“Well, happy birthday,” Louis says. He drops the tea-bags and lets the binlid fall closed. “Get up to any fun?”

He knows that Louis is just trying to be nice, to make conversation, but Harry can’t stop the dull laugh he breathes through his nose from escaping. He takes a measured sip of tea and considers that particular word. _Fun_.

He recalls the ‘party’ that Ev threw for him at the pub. The night consisted mostly of Harry watching Ned and Ev dance to _The Horses_ on repeat while Jai fed him beers and kept a close eye. Harry remembers drawing shapes in the condensation on the glass, smiling through awkward well wishes, and not much else. Everything was too numb, too fresh; Molly was still back at the farm and Dad wasn’t there.

He stared up at the Southern Cross while Tilda blew him behind the bricks, and then he went to bed and couldn’t muster up the energy to cry, just fell drunkenly onto the couch and passed out until late afternoon the next day. They all tried their own hand, all had their own ways of distracting him and each other from the elephants sat breaking the bar stools. None of it worked. The melancholy just made it worse in the end. Ev refused to let him go the next morning as they hugged tight, and she was right to do so.

He didn’t go back there until just a few nights ago. He glances over at Louis, and selfishly, wishes he hadn’t gone back at all.

“Sure,” Harry finally settles on. He’s been staring down into the icky brown of his tea for far too long. “Just a few drinks with some mates.”

Louis’ saved from replying by Pippa’s abrupt entry to the kitchen. She’s dust coated and panting, red dirt clinging to the backs of her legs and stomach. She slinks over to Harry’s side and stares up at Louis. In her few years there hasn’t been an extensive number of new people for her to interact with. Louis will become the prime target of any rogue behaviour because she knows she’ll get away with it.

“Hi there, Pip,” Louis muses, smiling down at her around the rim of his cup, the nickname coming out all too easily. “That’s a funny name you’ve got. I’m sure there’s a charming story behind it.”

“You could say that,” Harry says. He leans down so he can rub behind Pippa’s ears. “Molly’s kelpies had a litter a few years back and she sold them all off to farmers in and out of the shire. Pippa was the runt, y’know? So tiny they didn’t think she’d make it. Molly called her a little pip because of her fur. When she curled up back then she really looked just like a pip.”

“Seems like she’s turned out just fine,” Louis says, beckoning Pippa closer with a coo, fingers clicking. Pippa glady trots over to lap up the attention.

“Too friendly for your own good, aren’t you?” Harry hums. He finishes off his tea and leaves the cup in the sink.

They leave soon after, Pippa miffed that her seat has been taken. She settles moodily in the space between them and digs her feet into Harry’s thighs as punishment.

Louis plucks _Cloudstreet_ off the dash and flicks through the pages. He’s wearing those white shoes again, once new but now completely stained with dirt, and a loose shirt that he’s sure to get sunburnt in. Leather messenger bag in his lap, foot up on the seat, notebook balanced against his leg as he flicks between writing and watching the gold-burnt landscape flash past them.

Harry attempts to keep his eyes on the road. There are an overwhelming plethora of things that could go wrong today, things that could be brought up that have managed to lay dormant. The very idea of seeing Molly upset has Harry’s stomach in knots, and though he tries to push it away, a premature anger with Louis begins to simmer hot beneath his skin.

That anger flares when he notices Louis perk up as they pass the wilted flowers and the small cross. He peers into the wing mirror and then out to the emerging fenceline in the far distance, the silhouette of the Robertson farmhouse appearing like a ghost, mulga trees like jagged fingers.

Louis trails Harry awkwardly once he parks the truck. Harry’s plan for the morning isn’t going to change just because he has a cling-on. He’d be lying if he said he doesn’t revel in Louis’ confusion as he goes about his business, getting the milk ready for the calves and letting Pippa run loose.

“Where’s Molly?” Louis asks. Already he seems to be sweating uncomfortably.

“Out in the paddock, I’m assuming,” Harry replies briskly, brushing past him towards the pen. He can hear the calves, dust kicking up as they pace back and forth, eager for their breakfast. Louis follows aimlessly but doesn’t come into the pen, instead choosing to hang back and fan irately at the flies buzzing around his head.

They don’t speak while Harry feeds the calves. Bella is standing all on her own this morning, much to Harry’s elation. He gives her a thorough rub along her side and behind her ears while she drinks. By the time he emerges from the pen he’s sweat-sticky and Louis doesn’t seem to be faring much better, wiping at his forehead and giving Harry a look as he brushes past again.

“What are you doing?” Louis says.

“Working. Thought that was pretty obvious.”

“I thought I was going to talk to Molly,” Louis says, stopping in his tracks while Harry continues towards the truck, whistling for Pippa.

“Well, you can come out into the paddock if you really want,” Harry says, regarding Louis plainly. “Or you can stay in the air conditioned house. Maybe you should treat yourself to a glass of orange juice while you wait for us to get back.”

Louis’ face darkens, either from the scorching light or from Harry’s saccharine contempt. Likely both. Finally, he lets out a sigh and follows after Harry, swinging his body heavily into the truck and crossing his arms over his chest.

Heat sizzles off the ground in waves. Harry drives with the windows down in an attempt to let the air flow, just the tips of his fingers resting on the wheel until it’s bearable enough to hold and the uneven ground in the paddock poses too much of a challenge for his weak grip.

The cattle come into view slowly, trying their hardest to find shade under the stripped mulga trees, some still grazing what they can from the boney shrub. Harry brings the truck to a stop and chances a look in Louis’ direction. His eyes are wide, a little stunned. He props open the door of the truck and leans out, perched on the rail, with a hand shading his gaze.

Harry leaves Louis to take it all in and sets up the molasses, letting it flow once the dogs have herded the cattle close enough. Across the paddock, he finally spots Molly with the heifer. He doesn’t look back as he rushes over to them.

“She okay?” he breathes out, ducking close to help. Molly’s covered in sweat, red-faced. She must have been trying to get the heifer up by herself, probably for a while now.

“I don’t know,” Molly says softly, not meeting Harry’s eye. They try to encourage the heifer to stand.

“C’mon,” Harry murmurs, rubbing her side. “Not today. Not today.”

It’s a mission to get her up, to get her to stay up, but finally she seems stable enough to cross the paddock and join the rest of the cattle by the molasses. Harry wipes the sweat from his face, chest heaving slightly. Together they fall into step and start to cross the paddock.

“Will they be alright to shift?” Harry asks.

“We should wait,” Molly says. “I have a bad feeling.”

Harry glances at her. “About what?”

“I just do,” Molly says, eyes to the ground. “They’ll get exhausted if we move them now. We’ll have to do a dawn shift if the weather doesn’t back off.”

Harry can tell that she’s stressed, curled into herself as she watches the cattle. They can’t leave them in this paddock any longer, but he knows that she’s right, too. It’s too risky. Either way, they’re stuck. Harry hates this hopelessness, even more so because he knows Molly must be experiencing it two-fold.

“Who’s that?” Molly whispers, stopping in her tracks.

Louis is still standing by the truck, watching them approach. The timing for this is all wrong. Harry wishes there was nobody here but them, that they could just deal with this the way they know how. It’s too delicate to have some stranger blunder in and ask questions, and there’s too much to do for them to stop and wait.

“That’s the bloke I was telling you about,” Harry says sourly. “I’ll get him to leave—” 

“It’s fine,” Molly sighs. “Let him be. We’ll finish up here and then head back in. I got another letter from the bank I need to look at.”

“Shit, Mol,” Harry says. “Is it bad?”

Molly shrugs, tense, and Harry lets it go. He can see the wetness in her eyes, how defeated the stoop of her shoulders are. There’s always this part of him that wants to stand in front of her like a protective barrier. He should have tried harder to warn Louis off, because all he can foresee right now is another journo pretending to care, getting their piece and having their _life-changing experience_ and then fucking off again once they’ve had their week in the print.

Harry refuses to let that happen to Molly, to let anyone lull her into that false sense of care, only to leave her.

They continue towards the truck. Louis waits with his arms tucked nervously around his chest, then offers Molly a weak, tentative smile and holds out his hand to her once she’s close enough.

“Hi,” he says, smile brightening when she accepts his shake. “Molly, right? I’m Louis.”

“That’s me,” Molly says, on guard.

“It’s really great to meet you,” Louis says. He cups his other hand around his and Molly’s both, radiating warmth. Harry rolls his eyes. “What you’re doing here is incredible.”

Molly gently pulls her hand back. “If it were, we wouldn’t be meeting at all.”

She brushes past him and climbs into the truck, calling for the dogs as she does so. Harry tries not to be smug with how well that first encounter went, instead inclining his head for Louis to follow him.

The drive back to the house is short and silent. Alongside the heat the awkwardness is unbearable. If the air were any stuffier, they’d suffocate. In the truck bed Pippa and Jada have their faces tilted up to the light, tongues lolled out of their mouths, and when they come to a stop they’re off like bullets again, leaping down and chasing each other across the property on lithe, strong legs.

“Have you lived here your whole life?”

Harry turns minutely, watching as Louis and Molly start up the stairs to the veranda, Louis’ voice floating down from above.

“Yes,” Molly says. “Born and raised here, and I’ll probably die here, too.”

Harry skips up the steps to catch up to them. Louis’ got his notebook out of his pocket, and Harry hones in on it as he makes it onto the veranda. Molly opens up the sliding door to let Louis through first, but puts a gentle palm on Harry’s chest when he attempts to follow. He looks down at it questioningly, then back up to her eyes.

“Give us some time, lovie,” Molly says. “See if the calves need anything.”

“But I—”

“Go on.” Molly pats his chest and smiles weakly. “I’ll be right. Just have a little chat, won’t we?”

Harry looks over Molly’s shoulder. Louis’ already watching him back, sat at the table with his fingers linked together.

“If he says anything—”

“ _Harry_ ,” Molly says firmly.

It takes him a second to let in a breath, tense shoulders dropping. He steps back.

“Sorry.”

The door slides shut. He’s suddenly faced with his own murky reflection in the glass, sweaty and dirty and hair a mess, hat dipping awkwardly on his head. When he shifts focus Louis is still regarding him carefully, thumbs fiddling. Harry glares, turns sharply to descend the stairs, and heads straight for the pen.

The calves are happy to play for a little while but soon grow tired, skinny bodies resting amongst the dried out tufts of hay, huddling up and biting at each other to try and stay in what little shade overhangs from the shed. Harry sits in the corner with a dozing Bella, petting over the smooth curve of her head. Under the sunlight her scar is shiny and pink. It’s finally starting to fade where it cuts down the centre of her left eye.

“You’re so very brave, aren’t you?” he whispers to her, flapping ears like velvet beneath his rough fingers. She shifts and puts her heavy head on his lap. It’s almost too hot for her to do so, Harry’s entire body slick and tacky under the sunlight, but he lets her rest there anyway, flattening his palm over her side so he can feel for the _thud-thud-thud_ of her heart.

He isn’t sure how long he sits out there for, arse gone numb and the back of his neck searing when he realizes he’s had his head tipped forward, hat not doing enough to shade him. He can taste the dust in his teeth. Pippa and Jada are up on the veranda, finally exhausted enough to sleep, and Harry lets his head fall back against a post, eyes closed as he contemplates the very same thing.

The creak of the sliding door interrupts his plan to nap. He tilts his face to peek an eye at the house. Louis is the first one he sees, stepping out into the sunlight with squinted eyes. Molly follows with her arms crossed lightly over her middle. She spots Harry down in the pen and gestures for him with a nod.

Bella is less than impressed at Harry moving from underneath her. It takes him a good few minutes to regain any feeling in his legs.

“Wait by the truck,” he says to Louis as they pass each other on the stairs.

Molly is tracking Louis’ movements when Harry reaches her. It doesn’t look like she’s been crying, but something has shifted in her expression. She seems dazed. Eyes misty and far away.

“What happened?” he says, reaching for her immediately. A comforting hand on her elbow, the other by her shoulder. She doesn’t meet his eye, still looking down to where Louis is now leant against the truck and kicking up dust. Harry ducks his head to click their gazes together. “What did he say, Mol? I swear to God—”

“It’s fine,” Molly says quietly. She presses her hand over Harry’s own. “It was fine, lovie. Don’t panic.”

“You look upset,” Harry barrels on. “I don’t want him to think he can barge in here and take what he wants and be as insensitive as he bloody likes just because he’s got a paper to write.”

“He wasn’t insensitive,” Molly says. She squeezes Harry’s hand lightly. “He was lovely, actually. I’m just…”

She shakes her head and looks at her feet.

“Hey, _hey,_ ” Harry whispers, crowding in a little closer because he doesn’t want Louis to see. Already a burning heat crawls up the back of his neck. “It’s okay. You never have to see him again if you don’t want—”

“He reminds me so much of Elijah.”

Harry pauses, pulling away sharply. “What?”

“You don’t see it?” Molly says. She wipes a stay tear from the corner of her eye.

“God, no,” Harry breathes. “Not at all, Mol.”

“I don’t know, he just—” Molly makes a wayward gesture with her hand, wiping at her eyes again. “Talking about those things, you see memories as people. People as memories. It just overwhelmed me.”

It’s painful to see her this way.Harry pulls her into his chest while she composes herself and risks a glance over his shoulder. Louis is watching on, hands deep in his pockets. When he catches Harry’s eye he looks away, another lazy kick of his shoe through the dirt, sending it spraying into a grainy fog.

Harry’s mind reels all on it’s own, lost memories he likes to think he’d buried deep suddenly clawing their way up to the surface; mornings spent riding the paddocks, their hands splayed out the windows when they drove between the farms, the weekends away, just them tucked into their tent, the first kiss, the last kiss—

“What do you want to do?” Harry asks.

“Bring him back tomorrow,” Molly says, lifting her chin. “I’ll talk to him.”

-

Tense silence settles between them the whole way home. Harry has his eyes on the road and Louis doesn’t seem to be in any mood to talk to him, either, instead choosing to look out the window.

It’s sunset time, rows of gradient colour starting to blur and melt together like sorbet, all the reds and yellows and oranges swirling and dripping wet on the line of the horizon. The branches of dead trees are outlined in gold and they cast spindly, sleek shadows across the dead ground, ravens flying overhead like sunspots.

Harry leaves the flywire open tonight. It’s stuffy inside and he hopes for a non-existent cooler change to come through the open door. With the screen cracked like this the outside always finds a way to creep in, a grained dreaminess edging like a paint spill into each room.

“Hungry?” Harry asks. Louis’ already splitting off into the lounge, shoulders tucked in. He glances at Harry wearily over his shoulder.

“Sure,” he says.

Harry sorts through the freezer for a while, the post-it labels that Ev left on each container gone soggy and hard to read. Eventually, he finds a small tub of spaghetti and cracks the lid before putting it into the microwave. He stares out to the fields while he waits, his back to the cupboards, arms crossed lightly over his chest. By the window frame the radio rests and still pulses gently, intermittent voices poking through each rotation of microwave fuzz and the muted rush of the shower running down the hall.

“ _…heat wave from the south-east last week…north and north-west of the state....expecting record temperatures through to the west and a dry few days…_ ”

The microwave beeps. Absently, he splits the steaming pasta into two bowls and leaves Pippa’s dinner by the door for her when she decides to appear again. By the time he sets the bowls at the table and grabs a beer out of habit, Louis has emerged damp-haired and dressed in a fresh pair of clothes.

“Want a drink?” Harry asks.

“I’m good, thanks,” Louis says, uncharacteristically polite and stiff. He takes a seat at the table, runs his fork through the pasta, and doesn’t look up again for some time.

They eat mutely. Harry watches Louis intermittently, then goes back to staring out the window, to what he can see of the sky against the speckled underside of the tin roofing. It’s growing darker, rich colours blackening and turning into shadows.

Any efforts to stop himself thinking about Molly only serves to worsen his omnipresent worries. He should call to check in, but that would mean picking up the phone and dealing with the voicemail he knows will be waiting for him.

The back of his neck canes. Badly burnt, most likely. He’ll be due in for a lecture if Ev sees—even a pink nose is inexcusable in her rulebook.

Slowly, he rolls his head side to side in an attempt to relax a little, but he’s still in his dirty clothes, hair sweat-dried and disgusting at his temples, and when he looks down into his greasy bowl he finds that he can barely muster up the energy to be hungry.

“I hope you know that I didn’t mean to upset her,” Louis says out of the blue, fork twirling aimlessly. It doesn’t seem like he’s eaten much either. “I would never intentionally aim to do that, not for the sake of a story or a reaction. Not over something so sensitive. I’m not that kind of journalist.”

Harry’s silence eventually prompts Louis to meet his eye. He seems reserved, but beyond that, the mistrust is ever present. Harry knows he reflects that exact countenance back.

“You have to understand,” he starts, when he finds the words, “the stress she’s under right now, that we’re both dealing with, it doesn’t just go away. We can’t be detached like you can. So maybe you didn’t mean it, and maybe your intentions aren’t as terrible as they seem, but trust me when I say that nothing you do is going to make this better. It’ll only make it worse.”

Louis inhales slowly and diverts his gaze again. “I don’t believe that.”

“Of course you don’t,” Harry says, unsurprised. “Because you don’t understand.”

“I do—”

“Don’t.” Harry holds up a hand. “Don’t sit in this house, at this table, and tell me you understand.”

“I _want to._ And even with basic understanding comes empathy and love and care. If I can understand, then other people can, too. Reading a statistic and feeling the hurt, the pain—it isn’t the same thing.”

“Then we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Harry says, standing abruptly. He sorts through one of the cupboards for a container, then empties the remainder of his food into it and lets his bowl clatter noisily into the sink.

“How can you know if you won’t even give me a chance?” Louis says fiercely, apparently not done. Harry grits his teeth. “If more people could just see—”

“See _what?_ ” Harry whirls. “Do you seriously think anything will happen? Because I don’t. And you know why?”

Louis retracts a little, sitting back in his chair.

“The people who need to care aren’t suburban mums or uni students or the old bastards who read _The Age_. We need banks. We need the government. We need money. And if _anybody_ really cared, you wouldn’t be here right now,” Harry says, gesturing between them. “We wouldn’t all be filing for bankruptcy, selling cattle and land and struggling to survive and pay our bills. And – fuck! It doesn’t even matter. Because no amount of care is going to make it rain. No amount of _care_ or sensationalized media trash is going to fix this. Is that helping you with your understanding?”

After a few measured breaths, Louis stands from the table with a spine-tingling chair scrape, brushes past Harry to rinse his bowl, and disappears wordlessly into the next room.

It’s a struggle not to grab the nearest object and throw it at the wall. Hands braced on the bench, Harry stares down into the sink with his head hung between his sore shoulders and attempts to calm down. Heat gathers in his eyes but he refuses to cry. This mixed myriad of overwhelm is nothing new; it’s only the people and places that trigger it that ever changes the way it makes itself known, and in the case of this stranger, it shouldn’t warrant tears.

-

The broiling sneer of sunlight through the curtains has Harry’s body slack and supine, blinking awake with a hand over his heart, red shadows seeping through the walls like blood through a rag. He silences his alarm and sits up slowly. His neck, still sticky and nauseatingly fragrant from the aloe vera he sprayed on it last night, clings to the sheets.

He looks down at his palms. Cracked skin, smudged with grease. He couldn’t sleep and couldn’t bear to cross over into the living room while Louis was awake, so he spent a few hours tinkering in the shed. The pink-hot flash of television light had been like a motion sensor, flickering at the edges of his vision from the kitchen each time he thought of moving. Only once the house was still and completely dark did Harry even consider crawling into bed.

His hair, too, is a complete mess. Coiled tight from not washing it when he got in. It was too late to run the shower. Now, eyes bleary and body grimy as the new day approaches, he wishes he’d at least rinsed the tacky remnants of dust and sweat away, or washed the smudges of grime from his hands.

Nudging the bedroom door open, he’s surprised to find that Louis is already up. The bed is made, curtains still down to keep away the heat, but through the entryway into the lounge and across the hall in the kitchen he can see Louis at the sink, the running of water a hush between them.

Pippa appears then, too, ears perked as she peers out from under the table. She jolts towards him excitedly when she sees him. Louis turns to look at him over his shoulder, too. Their eyes skim, but Harry looks away almost immediately. He focuses his attention on Pippa instead, cupping her face and scratching fervently behind her ears to rile her up.

“Morning, little Pip,” he whispers, much to her delight. “My little Pip, aren’t you?”

A cup of steaming tea awaits when he enters the sun-ribboned kitchen, left precariously on the edge of the benchtop. Harry might consider it a weak and twisted apology, but Louis doesn’t meet his eye when he reaches for it. Just sits silently at the table and eats his cereal and writes in his notebook.

They don’t exchange a word for the entire morning, hitting the road early enough that the sun is just a semi-shined disk peeking up from the flat earth. _Gossip_ is still spinning, a low hum to fill up the space, skips and jumps here and there that make Harry’s fingers twitch on the steering wheel. He glances at Pop’s face, too, each time he swings into vision. The glass is getting dusty. There’s a tiny chip in the corner.

Louis doesn’t ask any questions while Harry tends to the calves, but he does watch this time, arms hung over the fencing as they swarm Harry in. He spots Bella in her corner, moody and sulking. She refuses the milk at first and lets out a pitiful bleat when he has to pull her face in closer to his body.

Harry’s tongue is like sandpaper, eyes dry and gritty when he finally stands and leaves the pen. They make it out to paddock one not soon after, but as they enter, he has to stop the truck by the fence. So many of the cattle are down, a few lying on their sides under the stripped mulga trees.

Stunned, he pulls the handbrake and scrambles out into the dust, the truck left running and beeping at him for leaving the door wide open.

Molly is crouched by the heifer they’ve been having trouble with, face grim.

“Jesus,” Harry says. He puts a hand on Molly’s shoulder and looks out across the paddock.

“I don’t know what to do,” Molly says helplessly.

“It’ll be okay,” Harry says. He’s trying not to be frantic, flustered, but they’re way out of their depth right now. They _have_ to move the cattle today, to the next paddock over at least. “C’mon. We’ve got it, we’ve got it. Let’s get them up.”

They help the heifer to her feet, letting her lean against a mulga tree for a few minutes until she’s able to walk, drifting towards the ute with the rest of the cattle. Harry wastes no time rushing over to let the molasses go, spreading it along the ground for them to get to easily.

Still inside the truck, Louis meets his eyes through the window, obviously shaken.

It takes them so long to get the cattle standing, going one by one. Both their faces become bloomed in red, shaky arms lifting and holding and hoping. Once they’ve managed to pull them up to stand, Molly steadies their sides while Harry slings the heavy heads of the cattle over his shoulder, his full body weight pressed against their front to stop them toppling forward or collapsing, waiting for the sensation to return in their brittle legs.

It’s dirty work. By the time they’ve got the herd together the sun is pounding down. Harry rubs his hands down his sweat-slick face.

Molly touches his hip. “We’re going to lose a few if we move.”

“We’ll lose them if they stay,” Harry says, hand still pressed to his cheek as he looks at her.

“I know,” Molly says. “The mulga trees on three are big enough to last them a few days. We could try pushing them to the edge of two and come back for them in the morning.”

“And after that?” Harry asks.

Molly sighs. “Pray for rain.”

-

It’s late noon by the time they get home from the Robertsons, cattle moved and bills sorted. Harry sat at the bottom of the stoop and pressed clumped dirt into powder while Molly and Louis had their ‘talk.’ 

Pippa is subdued and sticks close to Harry’s side as he trudges up the veranda on wobbly legs. The back of his neck is pulsing, lips cracked and dry. It isn’t dissimilar to the way he felt with Jai, leant against those bricks, limbs slowly turning to mush and melting away from their bones. It’s an effort to push the door open, and effort to hang up his hat, an effort to unbutton the top of his flannel. He falls into one of the dining chairs and immediately kicks off his boots. Fuck the mess it makes. Just another layer of dust on the dust that’s already there.

Louis follows, pours himself a glass of water, then leaves the room.

Soon enough, the kitchen is tainted with the pungent scent of aloe vera. Harry’s neck shines as he coats it in the spray, then his face, too, when his forehead starts to throb. The ease it brings him is only fleeting; after a few spritzes it becomes more dewy than refreshing, clinging to the edges of his mouth and the hair at his temples like sweat.

The stillness of another dry day, that static blanket of silence. He is lost in space and time altogether, sitting mindless and numb at the kitchen table. It’s these partial slips of pure nothing that leave him engulfed with uselessness, almost as though he’s been strapped down to his seat, shoulders and back aching where they’re stuck straight and stiff. Already, just a minute of pause here has his fingers drumming. He thinks back to the farm, to Molly, to the withering cattle and the calves left to swelter in the sun; to the insatiable, urgent and horrifying need to do something, thrown up against the realisation that there’s nothing more he can do.

Like wading through quicksand, he pulls himself to the bench and picks up the phone. Twirling the cord between his fingers, he glances over his shoulder. Only the empty gulf of the house meets his gaze, not even the little whisper of Pippa moving through the hall.

_‘You have two new voicemail messages. Last message received—twenty-fourth of February, one-nineteen p.m.’_

A beep.

_“Hi, lovie. Just checking in.”_

Harry curls his shoulders in and picks at a jagged scratch in the benchtop, guilt pulling low in his stomach.

 _“Ned’s doing a little cookup tonight if you want to pop by.”_ The bustle of the pub buzzes down the line, clinking glasses and voices, the telly fuzz blending with the crackled signal _. “Let me know, okay? Tell me how you’re getting on with everything. Love you.”_

There’s a pause before the line goes flat, almost like Ev was waiting for a response. The automated voice drills into Harry’s ear. He barely has a chance to register how he’s feeling before the line clicks over again and the warm buzz of the pub is replaced by the muffled shrill of a city far away.

_“Hey, kid. I just flicked on and watched the news. They said it’s gonna scorch your way for the next week. Really bad. I’m sorry I’m not there. I know you and Mol need it, and I just—. I’m…trying so hard, y’know? I don’t want you to think that I’m not, that I’m failing. I don’t want to fail you anymore than I have. Maybe I shouldn’t even say that to you. I just need you to know that I’m thinking of you, and that I’m sorry. I wish things were different. I wish I could give you the proper life I promised I’d—”_

“Harry?”

He flinches, and though he doesn’t mean to hang up the phone he does so reflexively, clattering it back onto it’s holder with a stricken thud. There are tears in his eyes. His body knows better than to turn around. Instead, he’s stuck staring out to the fields, gold-shine catching the wetness of his lashes. It’s starting to shadow outside, the tell-tale sign of a desperate dusk swallowing the day, and with it comes that dewier heat despite the dryness, that physical sizzle. A lump so thick has formed in his throat that it hurts to swallow.

“What?” he manages.

“I, um. I’m trying to check my emails but I can’t find your server.”

Harry ducks his head and pinches the bridge of his nose, still turned away. He doesn’t know how long Louis has been standing in the doorway, if he saw the slump to Harry’s shoulders and heard the low hum of words. Harry doesn’t know how it’s possible that he can be so suddenly overwhelmed and so disastrously hollow all at once.

“We don’t have one out here,” he says. “Got rid of our dial-up a while back.”

“Oh…”

Still turned away, Harry rises to get a glass of water. Towards the back of the house he hears the tell-tale squeak of the laundry flap. It isn’t long before Pippa begins nosing at his knees in search of her dinner. Wordlessly, he scratches behind her ear and reaches up into one of the cupboards for her kibble.

“It’s kind of important,” Louis pushes lightly. “Is there somewhere close I can drive to?”

“I usually highjack Molly’s,” Harry says, “or I use Ev’s when I have to send anything off to the bank. Aside from that, no.”

“Okay.” Louis mulls it over. “Maybe we could go back up to Bourke tonight? I kind of wanted to talk to Evelyn, anyway.”

Harry pauses, which earns him a quick yip from Pippa, clearly displeased that her patience isn’t getting her any closer to food.

“Why?” Harry asks, filling the dog bowl and placing it down for her.

“Just to talk,” Louis says simply. How informative. “Molly mentioned they used to live out in Louth before they moved the pub up to Bourke. I thought it might help the story if I asked her about it.”

Harry sighs and rubs a hand over his face, finally turning. Louis’ leant by the door, a heavy-looking laptop balanced over his arm. Harry knows his reluctance must be all over his expression, drawn and exhausted, because Louis recedes a little when their eyes meet.

“Whatever,” Harry says, too fed up to say anything else. “We’ll go later.”

“Okay—”

“Great.”

With that, Harry shoulders past Louis and heads for the bathroom, aching for the tiles and to get away from the sunlight. Through the fogged glass it’s mellowed, and though the air inside is stuffy and choking, the dampness and dewiness that lingers is enough to bring a facade of something wet and separated from the chalky wasteland that surrounds them.

Like always, the water isn’t warm when he stands under the spray. Taps turned just right, that cursory drag of fingers through his sweaty, tangled hair, the slither of old soap that he drags halfheartedly over his sunburnt skin. He breathes through the sixty-to-zero countdown of stilted calm he has here, watching dirty water slide down slick skin and disappear down the drain. For just that minute there comes a sense of renewal, even if it isn’t real. He can pretend. He shuts the water off at _fifty-nine, sixty_ and the entire bathroom is a steaming, fogged dream. Condensation on the walls, little droplets by the taps.

Harry wipes his hand over the mirror and closes his eyes at the cool wetness he finds there.

-

 _The Evelyn_ is a little hub tonight, and from the outside the humble bricks catch the last of the day’s gold. There are kids chasing down the truck. Harry slows to let Pippa out when her excitement gets too much, her lithe legs kicking up dust as she runs off with the boys on their bikes, the little girls with no shoes and sunburn on their freckled faces. She’ll be back within the hour, he knows, but first she’ll try to get them all home safe, chasing them out and away to the little huddles of homes, or to the tiny park around the corner that’ll be the first place parents check.

Harry puts on his smile when he and Louis enter. Ned is nowhere to be seen and Jai’s holding court behind the bar, doing what looks like more talking than pouring beers, caught up in vivid conversation. Maybe it’s slightly overdramatic to come through the front door, but Harry simply refuses to lead Louis around the back. As a result, he can’t help but feel awkward as they wade around the tables—it’s like he’s a visitor and not a regular, like he’s here only for a beer and not to spend the night.

Although, he doesn’t have plans to stick around tonight. They’ll head home as soon as dinner is done.

By the time they hit the bar Jai’s polishing glasses, these swift fidgets of his hands that Harry reads all too well. In the bar light the highlighted ends of his hair look mellowed. He smiles when he spots them approaching. It’s familiar, a small slither of comfort, and Harry accepts the glass of coke and the warm handshake Jai presses his way.

“Mate,” Jai says. “You’re pink.”

“Just a little,” Harry says.

Jai reaches out and bops Harry’s nose with flourish.

“Rudolph, I’ll call you,” he says, and glances over Harry’s shoulder. “This the journo bloke, then?”

Louis steps up to the bar and holds out his hand. “Louis. Nice to meet you.”

“You too, mate,” Jai says. He cuts a quick glance Harry’s way, a quirk of his eyebrow. “Ev’s popped out for a bit, but I think Ned’s upstairs if you wanna go chew his ear for a while. He’s doing a roast.”

“In a sec,” Harry says. He takes a seat at the bar after a moment of deliberation. There’s still that lingering ache in his chest, still the sensation of dust between his teeth and under his nails. The way he hears Dad’s voice on loop over and over is subconscious, but the anxious twist to his gut is anything but. He didn’t hear all of what Dad had to say, but isn’t even sure he wants to listen to the rest. He just needs to sit and be distracted for a while. “You end up driving out this morning?”

“Yeah, nah.” Jai shrugs. “It got too hot, in the end. Tils was caught up with work, anway. I don’t blame her. Think I’d rather be standing under an aircon bagging groceries than getting caught out in the sun.”

Louis is still hovering awkwardly, and Harry glances at him from over the rim of his glass, taking a slow sip. He doesn’t look impressed. Eventually, he breaks Harry’s gaze and pulls out his own stool with a loud scrape.

“See, I knew you’d flake out,” Harry says to Jai.

“I bloody didn’t,” Jai says, and leaps forward in an attempt at poking Harry’s nose again. “I just assessed the situation, and all that. Good thing I did, too. I would’ve come out of it looking like you.”

“Piss off,” Harry laughs, a warm palm to his still warm neck. “At least I haven’t resorted to frosted tips.”

“I’m trendy, alright?” Jai says. He shakes his head back and forth like a dog, shaggy hair all over the place. “A real stunner.”

“My mate has the same thing,” Louis says, then. Harry’s smile wanes. “He’s got black hair though, so it looks kind of ridiculous. You pull it off, mate.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Jai says, dramatically gracious. “See, H? A well-knowledged journo likes ‘em, so they must be good.”

“Sure,” Harry says flippantly. He swirls his coke around and takes a long sip, Jai now occupied with drink requests. The pub’s starting to fill, casual chatter morphing into a swell of semi-drunk ocker. Someone’s got _Spirit of Place_ pumping in the next room over and from the bar it sounds distant and dreamy, blending all the tones and textures around them into one seamless piece.

They fiddle with barmants and look anywhere but each other. Despite this collective soundscape, the glow from the lights and the buzz from the telly and the taps and the kitchen through the walls, Harry is tense with the thought that he sticks out like a sore thumb, the pull in a sweater that catches on everything, flimsy and lost in what should be one of the most familiar places.

“There he is!”

A warm hand spreads between his shoulder blades, a body close, and then Harry turns his head and Tilda is there, freckled face soft and intimate pressed up against his cheek. She pulls back with a tired, sweet smile, eyes flicking over his own. A quick assessment.

“Thought you’d’ve gotten the slip-slop-slap memo by now, H,” Tilda says, smile widening when he rolls his eyes and shrugs her off.

“Yeah, alright. You’re original.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Tilda says with a teasing pout. She leans back against the bar with her elbows, up on her toes so that when Harry finally looks at her again, their gazes are level. She’s all messy hair and sun-cracked lips and there’s something charming about it, the little sneer of her nose as she laughs at him. It should be calming. Another familiarity. Instead all Harry can summon is a niggling ache.

“Really, though,” Tilda says, “you’re brave letting Ev see you with a face like that.”

“Think it’d be worse if I didn’t visit at all, to be honest,” Harry says.

Tilda hums, head lolling to the side so it’s almost on her shoulder. “I’m surprised to see you, actually.”

“Why’s that?” Harry asks but already knows, and hides his face away in his glass to avoid her eye.

“Dunno,” Tilda says quietly. “You’re a bit of a ghost sometimes. Catch you in the corner of my eye and then you’re gone again just like _that._ ”

She snaps her fingers between them, smile winsome and small, and Harry supposes he should feel coy at that, maybe needy, like he should respond with something equally as cryptic and silly. Maybe on another day, without the heavy guilt so present, he would.

“I guess I just like to keep moving,” Harry says, finally. Affable smile. All gentle. “You know that.”

“I do,” Tilda says. She leans further against the bar, back bowing to see past him. “Don’t know who this is, though. Is he with you?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, and is inexplicably nervous when he realizes Louis has been observing their exchange with his chin propped in his hand. “This is Louis, he’s a journalist from down south. Louis, this is Tilda.”

“How far south?” Tilda asks, sticking her hand out in front of Harry’s face for Louis to take.

“Richmond,” Louis says. “Like, in Melbourne.”

Tilda whistles, brows flashing. “Fancy.”

“Not really.” Louis smiles politely. “The share house I’m in right now is a strong gust away from falling to bits.”

“Well, you’ll fit right in,” Tilda says. “Good thing we don’t get much wind up this way, or much of anything but sunshine. Is this your first time up here?”

“I mean, I’ve been to Sydney for a few little holidays…” Louis scratches at his chin. “That really doesn’t count, does it?”

“You’re doing better than me, if it counts for anything.” Tilda nudges Harry’s leg with her hip. “Most we’ve ever done is driven off the Kamilaroi Highway without a map or a clue.”

“And how’d that turn out?” Louis says, charmed.

“Shitful,” Tilda grins. “We basically had this whole end of summer road trip planned. Thought we were going to conquer the whole bloody world once we set off, but it was one of those times where disaster after disaster kept happening. I reckon we only made it an hour out…”

Harry loses focus like falling into a liquid dream, eyes on the sticky residue of coke at the bottom of his glass. He can register things, still, the music and the voices, Tilda warm beside him, Jai laughing with his head thrown back across the bar. He’ll blame this tunnel vision on exhaustion but it's the same response he has to any story or memory that he’s fought hard to bury down into the dry dirt of years past. Yet even with that burial, that funeral for a once good thing, he knows that if he really tried he could still dig his hands in and recall it all like it was just yesterday.

So he zones out, for now, and lets his eyes linger on the bottles behind the bar, the pictures pinned to the fridge, Ev cuddling Pippa when she was a pup, Dad and Ned dressed up proud in their red and white, little snippets of the local paper, familiar faces and family stuck with magnets to the chilled glass. There’s a picture of Molly and Pat in the top corner, sitting at a dressed up table with a glossy candle between them. They look so young, faces warm with mellow dulcitude. A wedding anniversary, maybe. A birthday.

“Harry? _Oi_.”

Like someone has taken their hands off his ears, the pub din rushes back to him in one strong flourish. He blinks the fuzz from his head and turns to face an expectant Tilda.

“You didn’t hear a word I just said, huh?” she says knowingly, flicking his shoulder.

“Sorry.” Harry flashes an apologetic smile. “I think I’ve heard that story a million times.”

“Sure.” Tilda rolls her eyes. She turns and slings her arm over his shoulder gently. “You sticking around for tea?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” She smudges a warm kiss to his cheek and runs a playful hand through his hair to mess it up. “Back in a tick.”

With that, she’s gone, propelling herself across the pub and out the door again. Harry watches her go, face to his shoulder. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, turns back around, and attempts to flatten his hair down.

“She’s bubbly,” Louis comments.

Harry glances at him, thumb caught in a knotted curl. “Yeah…”

“Is she from around here?” Louis asks. A casual fish for information, Harry’s sure. “I get kind of confused, with the towns.”

“Tilda’s from Bourke. She’s Ev’s niece,” Harry explains. “Jai is from around here, too, but no family relation. Not by blood, anyway. Ned and Ev used to run the pub down in Louth but it was too small. Way too quiet. It made sense for them to come up here, and we’re all part of the same shire, anyway.”

“Right,” Louis nods. He looks as though he’s about to speak again, but then Jai is there, elbows on the bar as he leans up in Harry’s space and unintentionally saves him from having to answer another question.

“Smoko?”

“I shouldn’t,” Harry says after a beat. His eyes narrow. “What’s with the sudden change of heart?”

“Thought I’d offer,” Jai says. He pats Harry’s shoulder lightly. “Looks like you need a bit of something.”

Harry cuts his eyes away so he doesn’t have to see the sad, sympathetic smile that tugs at the corner of Jai’s mouth. “I’ll be fine. Might head up to Ned, unless you need a hand.”

“I got it,” Jai says. “Mitch can cover for me.”

“Alright.”

“See you for tea, mate.”

Jai slips out towards the kitchen. Harry resists the urge to follow and leads Louis out through the front again, rounding the side of the building and tracing the warm bricks with light fingers as they go. Bourke is shot through with arid fog. Ruby cellophane has been rolled out over the last of the sun.

He’s surprised to see Pippa back when they round the corner, though less surprised that she’s covered in dirt and obviously pleased with herself. He brushes her off and unlocks the back door, and before he can get a foot forward she shoots up the narrow stairway.

Inside, it smells of pure rosemary. The table is set, candle burning wet and bright in the centre. Pre-game on the telly, the white-static reflects blurring against the curtains, and by the stove Pippa already has Ned totally enraptured in chin scratches. Harry pauses when the room opens up before him. The sudden wave of nostalgia is intense and all encompassing.

“Hey, kid,” Ned says, finally looking up from Pippa’s bright eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m good,” Harry says by default. He’d never want to let Ned think anything less than that.“Smells amazing in here.”

“Thought it’d be nice to get us all together,” Ned says. “Not often I can manage to round you lot up.”

Harry finally crosses the room, accepting the firm hug Ned has for him. He gets a little lost in it, just for a second, the same way he did a few nights before. The shorter the time between each visit, the harder it becomes to go and come again.

Once he manages to pull away, Louis clears his throat, amicable smile at the ready.

“Ned, this is Louis,” Harry introduces, stepping back to the bench so Ned can hold out his hand to shake.

“Hey, mate,” Ned says, grip firm, staring at Louis down his nose. Harry’s seen that look countless times, the not-so-subtle fatherly sweep that Ned tends to do with everyone and anyone, the same look he still gives Harry sometimes. “You must be that fella Ev was telling me about.”

“Only good things, I hope,” Louis says hesitantly.

“Always a good thing if it’s coming from her,” Ned says. “Heard you’re off to see Molly?”

Louis seems caught off guard by the question, and he isn’t alone in that. Nobody has directly asked about it yet. The question brings with it a sense of reality it seems they’re both unprepared for. Harry crosses his arms over his chest and waits for Louis’ reaction, Ned still assessing.

“I am,” Louis says carefully. “I’ve spoken to her a couple of times. She’s a lovely person, really thoughtful.”

“That’s our Mol,” Ned nods. He claps Louis’ shoulder lightly. “Tough as nails, but with the softest bloody heart.”

The night settles slowly. Louis makes himself comfortable on the couch once Harry has him hooked up to the internet, and he types away silently while Harry helps Ned finish up dinner. The quiet _tick-tick_ of laptop keys is new. Harry’s fingers twitch at the sound, so used to the heavy clunk of their old desktop back home. He attempts to zone it out and focus on other things, the gentle hiss of the gas burners and the muffled voices of television presenters, Ned humming nonsensically under his breath.

By the time Ev gets in, up to her elbows in shopping bags, Ned is setting the table. Harry greets her with a warm hug and follows her back downstairs, catching Jai and Tilda on their way up. It’s darker out now, Bourke no longer dipped in those rich colours. Ev keeps him close as they unload the last of the bags, both of them brushed in shadow.

“How’s it been?” she asks, boot shutting with a click. “You’ve been nice?”

“I’ve been civil.”

“Harry.”

“I’m trying!” Harry says. “He’s just so—” He makes a vague gesture with his hand. _Nosy. Disingenuous. Annoyingly pleasant._ “Molly was rattled, the first day.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me what they talked about. She said—. She said that he reminds her of Lij.”

Ev makes a noise of contemplation and flicks her eyes to the upstairs window. “I don’t think any of us know him well enough to be making comparisons, yet.”

The table has become a squished mess, roast vegetables in silver trays and novelty salt & pepper shakers, the old plates Harry’s sure Ev’s had since he was a kid piled up at the end, ready to be stacked with food. The little upstairs apartment only crowds further when Tilda’s parents, Paula and Matt, shuffle up with a bottle of wine each in hand and burnt noses. They pull Harry into firm, smothering hugs once they spot him.

He catches Louis’ eye here and there. He’s still on the couch with his computer, but he seems distracted by the different conversations and presences in the room, and each time their eyes meet it takes a second for them both to pull away. Harry tries and fails to read the expression he finds there.

By the time they’re all settled in to eat, the footy has started, so Ned and Matt occupy the couch to watch with their plates on their knees while the rest of them knock elbows at the table, passing potato salad and the bread basket back and forth. Louis sits beside him and each time either one of them shifts, their knees collide.

Once the conversation picks up it’s easy for Harry to let himself fade into the background, but Louis is quiet, too, which makes them easy targets all too quickly.

“So, Louis,” Paula says, after the current topic lulls and bowls are passed around again. “Ev was telling me you’re a journalist.”

“If that’s what it’s called these days,” Louis says with that polite smile, but it still makes Paula laugh. She got the same round face as Ev, though she’s far taller, skin freckled just like Tilda’s. “I guess calling myself a writer is a bit too vague. Everyone and their grandum is a writer.”

“What got you into journalism?” Paula asks, spooning potato salad onto her plate. All eyes are in their direction now. Harry pokes at his dinner and waits for Louis’ reply.

“If I’m honest, I sort of fell into it,” Louis says. “It’s expensive to rent so close to the city, and waiting tables and writing freelance on the side wasn’t quite cutting it, so. Getting the degree was always sort of a backup for me if everything else didn’t work out, but I ended up really loving it anyway.”

“What’d you write before?” Jai asks. “Books?”

“I’ve written a few short things. Still do,” Louis says. “Nothing good enough to make it past an editor, though.”

Harry glances to the side. Louis seems almost shy, now, picking at his food and not quite looking up as he talks. If his sudden sheepishness is a ploy for sympathy, Harry will have no part. 

“That’s cool, mate,” Jai says. “Sucks you’re stuck working for the bloody paper.”

Louis shrugs. “It’s not so bad, and it’s the reason I’m here, isn’t it?”

The air at the table changes slowly, like the onset of a distant storm. Harry sees it in Ev, first, the flattening of her mouth as she flicks her eyes to her food, and it takes Louis no time at all to realize he’s said the wrong thing, the flow of conversation halted.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” he starts, then cuts himself off. “That came out wrong. I’m not here just because it’s some job. I only meant that I’m grateful for the position to—”

“It’s alright,” Ev says with a wave of her hand. “I know it’s delicate.”

Louis nods and awkwardly looks down at his plate. In the stilted pause the noise of the telly seeps through, the shouting of the crowd and shrill whistles, the rangehood above the stove still humming. A click of cutlery, a few bated breaths, and then Paula clears her throat and tucks her hair behind her ears, turning her gaze to Harry next.

“And how’ve you been, possum?” she asks warmly. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since your birthday.”

“I’m fine,” Harry says, but it comes out too firm before he can catch himself. Across the table Ev casts him a look. “Still helping Molly out. Nothing new.”

“How’s your Dad?” Paula asks next. Harry stabs at a potato.

“He’s okay.”

“I’ve tried to call him a few times, but he must be busy.”

“He is.”

“I heard they had rain in the city,” Paula says, addressing the table. “With any luck it’ll coast our way.”

Harry doesn’t respond and Jai is quick to fill in the gaps for him, the conversation starting to flow again. More talk about the weather, more talk about the city. Harry cuts into his food and his knife scrapes against porcelain. The prickling sensation that slithers down his spine is a definite sign it’s time to move.

He gets up without excusing himself, and maybe that was his first mistake, but the air inside the little apartment has become too stuffy, too intense, and he needs to breathe for just a second, needs that little slice of time to himself to try and process a bombardment of conflicting feelings. Pippa doesn’t follow him down, enamoured with the scraps Ned is no doubt feeding her, and when he clumsily bursts out into the night, it’s quiet and completely still, that underlying pulse of bugs and earth the only subtle whisper he can pick up on.

He drops the tailgate on the truck and swings himself up, knees to his chest. It doesn’t take long for his head to droop, buried away, his own hot breath bouncing back at him as he inhales slow, exhales slow. The anger within himself is sudden. He’d been so short, so rude, a selfish kid too concerned with himself to be kind, and that was all Paula was trying to do. To be kind to him, to show a little care. He lets out a long, whimpered sigh and pushes his fingers deep into his hair, heels of his palms flat to his forehead.

He’s lost in his thoughts, slowly spiralling, when a warm hand touches his shin. It makes him flinch but he’s quick to school his face, and looks up to find Tilda staring at him, brows gently furrowed. She presses her thumb in minutely, lips pulling up into that sad, tiny smile that Harry hates so much, especially on the people who know him the best, the ones whose pity lands like a kick to the stomach.

“You okay?” Tilda whispers.

Harry nods and looks away. His throat is far too tight to speak. Eventually, Tilda lets out a sigh and pulls herself up to sit beside him, legs dangling back and forth, palms spread behind her. With their hips pressed close Harry can feel her warmth. It gathers slow at his neck, the metal beneath their legs not seeming so cool anymore, that illusion of a navy night revealing itself as a blue-hot flame, left on low to let the whole of Bourke simmer.

Absently, Harry wipes the sweat from his top lip.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Tilda says. “I’ll listen.”

“I know.”

Tilda leans forward in an attempt to catch his eye. There’s hardly any light out here, just the dull reach from the warm yellow of the upstairs window, that fluorescent hum that peeks around the corner of the pub. Tilda is outlined in silver, the freckles on her face smudged and dark, and her eyes are little pools, full of a sadness Harry can’t quite read. He breaks his gaze away and looks at his knees instead.

But not for long. A gentle finger brushes the edge of his jaw and tilts his face back towards the dim light. Tilda drops a tentative kiss to his bottom lip first before kissing him fully. He kisses her back half-heartedly, but it isn’t enough. She pulls back to wet her lips and blinks at him in the dark.

“What is it?” she whispers, thumb swiping over his jaw. Harry drops his eyes but she’s right there to follow him, ducking close to let their lips touch again.

Harry pulls away numbly. “I’m just tired.”

“H—”

“I’m really tired, okay?” Harry exhales, closing his eyes when Tilda presses her palm to his neck, cool against the burn.

“You’ll be okay,” she says. Her hand squeezes gently. “Promise.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, how to respond without gritted teeth, without letting that nasty part of himself off the leash, knowing the guilt that will undoubtedly follow. In the dark, the heat surrounding them, their closeness is magnified to a point of invasiveness. Harry sighs and slips back down to the ground. The contact is too much. Tilda’s arm falls to her side.

They’re almost the same height now, and she’s still all blue-silver, shoulders curled in.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says softly, swallowing down the bite. “I’m sorry, okay? I know I haven’t—. I’ve been a complete cunt. I’m trying. I’m gonna do better.”

“It’s fine,” Tilda says. Her mouth quirks, that pity-lilt again. “You don’t have to apologize to me for anything. I get it.”

Harry nods and looks away with his hands on his hips. He can’t look her in the eye.

Tilda hops down, boots kicking up dirt. The hand she places on Harry’s elbow is careful. He still can’t look at her.

“Come back inside,” she says.

Harry follows wordlessly. Bourke is just a lunar hum, all vacuum silence with the bugs vibrating like stars, and those shiny bullets look so close, like the sky is falling in, dark and gluggy and ready to swallow them all whole in a sweep of hot magma. It nips at his ankles when he nudges the door closed behind them, seeps through the cracks and chases him up the stairs and soaks through his shoes.

The table is clear. At the sink, Ev and Paula have their wash-dry system down to a T, conquering the stack of plates and utensils. Ned and Matt are still deeply indented to the couch. Soon, the game will start and Ev will beg him to stay.

Across the room, now at the desk, Harry catches Louis’ eye. Just for a moment, but it’s enough.

He looks away.

-

The roads go on forever during the night.

Headlights bright, dust flicking up behind the wheels, the journey down Louth Road this late is like squeezing through a closing tunnel, racing against the impending doom of being shut inside and stuck with nothing but darkness around them.

They haven’t spoken a word to each other since leaving the pub. Now, in the quiet, Harry’s fingers wrapped tight around the wheel, he can’t stop looking into the rearview mirror, into the wings, thumbs slipping each time the truck jolts over a pothole. At his side, Pippa has curled up against his leg to sleep.

Harry glances to his left. Louis is gazing out into the darkness and humming along to the radio, reflection and outline barely visible from the radio glow. Pop swings into Harry’s vision as the tires scrape up dust, too close to the edge, tilting, too close—

“You alright?” Louis asks, breaking the silence and looking at Harry over his shoulder with a hand propped against the sill, almost as if to steady himself.

Harry peers into the rearview. Thick plumes of white-shot dust trail behind them as he straightens the wheel.

“Fine,” he says shortly.

He puts his foot down and listens to the engine growl.

The silence takes over again. They hit a pothole and the CD skips, stuck this time— _from a dream I’ve woken, from a dream I’ve woken, from a dream I’ve woken—_ until Harry smacks the flat of his palm against the dash. It stutters back to life.

“…Are you _sure_ you’re—”

“I said I’m fine,” Harry snaps. The side of his face burns under Louis’ gaze.

“Okay,” Louis mutters.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, go on—”

“Jesus Christ. I was just _asking_ , mate,” Louis says, facing Harry now, leg propped up on the seat so he can put a knee to his chest. “You look like you’re about to burst a blood vessel.”

The truck rattles as they hit another pothole.

“I don’t need your concern.”

“Whatever,” Louis says with a huff of laughter, turning away. “Evelyn didn’t seem too pleased about us driving back so late.”

Heat starts to gather under Harry’s collar. They didn’t fight, but there was that push-shove feeling again, the kind that draws knots up tight in Harry’s stomach. Ned’s stern gaze, Ev following them down the stairs with her fingers in Harry’s shirt to try stopping him, but he’d shrugged her off. He has to get home, back to Molly, back to the house.

“That’s none of your business,” Harry says.

Louis lets out another scoff of laughter, this air of amusement in his features as he turns to face Harry again. “Are you always this much of an arsehole?” he questions. “Or am I just getting the special treatment?”

“Are you always this nosy?” Harry counters.

“I’m a journalist, darling,” Louis says, drawled with pure poise. “That’s my job.”

It’s clear teasing. The look in Louis’ eyes, the offhand way he speaks, that casualness that irks Harry magnificently. Against his will colour begins to spread over his cheeks, and he almost pulls over so he can storm off into the darkness, stop the engine and wait for the collapse of the tunnel so neither of them can see it.

Pippa stirs in her sleep. Harry takes a hand off the wheel and slots his fingers into her fur to feel the steady beat of her heart.

“So,” Louis continues, shifting now, legs crossed and back straight. “Are you and Tilda together?”

“If you’re trying to make conversation with me, I don’t want any part of it,” Harry says. The diversion falls from his mouth all clumsy, blood pumping faster. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business anyway.”

“It’s just a question,” Louis says simply.

“I’m tired of you asking questions, to be honest,” Harry says. “I’m tired of you being in our space.”

“I’ve been here two days.”

“That’s enough,” Harry says, palms opening up against the wheel as he huffs a tired breath. “ _Trust_ me, that’s more than enough.”

“Are you really so immature that you can’t—”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it's true.” Louis crosses his arms over his chest. “Honestly, I feel like I’m talking to a rock, sometimes.”

Harry’s chest twists with what he refuses to recognize as genuine hurt. The defensiveness springs out of him easily, like a jack-in-the-box. And he’s been winding up all night.

“You’re obnoxious.” He counts off on his fingers. “You’re insensitive. You’re completely out of touch. Have you ever considered that the reason I don’t want to talk to you is because you’re treating us like fossils you’ve plucked out of the dirt? All eager to brush us off and clean us up and parade us around for your suits to see like some fucked up trophy. I don’t trust you. I don’t want to be asked your ridiculous questions. I don’t want some random journalist I’ve never met before sleeping on my couch and fucking everything up while we’re already in the middle of the biggest crisis of our lives.”

The cheery tune from the radio that bubbles up into the stunned silence is comically uncomfortable.

“Jesus,” Louis whispers. “Evelyn was right about you being tetchy.”

Harry nearly slams the breaks.

“Just fuck off!” he says, waspish, the only way to hide the way his eyes start to sting. He’s reminded of being a kid, hiding in the hallway and trying to catch his parents' conversation, wondering what they were saying about him, about each other, plagued with juvenile jealousy at the thought of being left out. And now this, this person he hardly knows swapping secrets with the people he trusts.

“Look, I’m sorry—”

“You're _seriously_ trying to apologize right now?” Harry says in pure disbelief.

Louis’ mouth clicks shut.

By the time they turn off Louth Road and see the fenceline, the frenzied hornets nest of anger inside Harry has settled to a simmer. In its wake he’s just shaky, already anticipating the amount of overthinking he’ll do tonight while struggling to sleep. Part of him, though, doesn’t even want to know the details of what Louis and Ev talked about.

Harry swings the truck up the dirt road, the house faintly illuminated in the distance.

Neither of them move once they come to a stop. They’re stuck in a tank of dark-blue dye, left to soak and stain.

After a short millennia, Louis clears his throat and gathers his bag up onto his shoulder, shoving his way out into the night with Pippa on his heels. Harry stares down at the steering wheel, takes a breath, and reaches for the handle.

He doesn’t turn on the light at first, paused in the doorway. A glacial sheet spills out from the kitchen and to the hall, a slow trickle of muted colour that he treads towards carefully. The telephone sits sterile and almost innocent in a patch of moonlight. He hears Louis throw his bags down in the other room, the rustle of sheets, the wet, clicking sound of Pippa lapping at water in the laundry down the hall.

The exhaustion hits like a freight-train. Tilda’s face and Ev’s fingers in his shirt and the scraping of their cutlery at the table, the omnipresent figure missing from the spot beside Ned and Matt on the couch. With a slow blink and a roll of his shoulders, Harry navigates through the darkness to the sink.

The curtains are drawn back and the whole room is a steely-black, slips of silver like needles through the shutters, glinting on the taps and turning them cold when Harry twists and lets the water gush into his glass. He leans his hips into the bench and closes his eyes. With everything so dark he can pretend the heat isn’t there, water held in his mouth to coat his gums and teeth, to try and will away that powdery, scraping sensation in his throat that makes him feel as though he’s about to retch.

There’s a rustle of movement from the lounge. Harry glances over his shoulder, face tucked there to watch as Louis undresses, bare shoulders smooth and blurred from the heavy darkness, his figure a mere shadow for night to press into and mould, and it’s as he turns to throw his shirt onto a pile of growing laundry that their eyes catch, Louis paused, face set, Harry with his glass halfway to his lips.

He looks down into the sink.

The light flashes again, catches the corner of his vision like the swing of a lighthouse beam through fog.

He watches it blush, and then the need to go overtakes the need to touch, so he laces his boots and heads out into the hall and lets the door shut behind him, all the water in his mouth soaked up again by dryness as his soles meet the dirt. In the truck he only spares a glance at Pop’s shadowed face before he’s slamming it into gear, pulling away from the house and back out onto the road towards town, to the cross, that empty space in his chest aching to be filled.

-

A week of quiet and the sun’s gnashing, terrorising teeth.

He spends most evenings sweating through his sheets, most mornings unsticking himself from the imprint his body has made overnight. He leaves the Hilux to run as soon as he wakes, windows up and the aircon blasting so that by the time they leave it’s possible to breathe inside the musty old truck. The drive seems longer and the world is drier and Harry is spindly and thin like the broken mulga trees and barely there tussocks, one dust storm away from crippling and snapping in every place he once bent.

He and Louis don’t speak. They split ways almost immediately at the Robertsons. Harry hides down in the pen with the calves once the grueling morning on the paddock is through, once they’ve counted their molasses with bitten down fingers and Molly’s assured him that for now things with the bank are okay, that their loans are holding and they won’t collapse yet, that they can hold out a little longer.

He can’t be short with Molly. He’d never want to be. But he’s withdrawn and he knows that she notices. It’s in the way she touches, the light hand over his back and neck, the cheeky pinches to his side because she can see he needs some kind of space, but not enough to let him go completely adrift.

Then there’s the other side of it, the need to be quiet because if Harry asks, he won’t be able to stop, will let himself get tangled and harsh with the need to _knowknowknow_ every corner and line and detail of the conversations she has with Louis, what goes on behind the shiny reflects of that glass door.

He has to be quiet because if he asks questions, it’ll start to eat him from the inside. So he lets Louis write down his notes and drink his tea and spend his nights typing, that irrant _tap-tap-tap_ of light keys filtering into every facet of Harry’s mind, under the crack in the door as he waits for sleep, when they’re avoiding each other and he’s in the kitchen nursing a dripping beer, and then worse, in dreams, the soft ticking becoming that of a clock, spine-crawling and nightmarish the hotter it gets.

-

Death warmed up might be putting the expression lightly as Harry stumbles into the kitchen, half an hour earlier than his alarm is supposed to ring, under eyes heavy. Death boiled, maybe, death left splayed out in the dirt for a week; no shade, no water, shriveled up and sore and crumbling into nothing but dust. Slow, unsteady, he reaches out for the radio on the sill and turns up the dial, the low crackle of the local station chirping to life.

Outside, the whole world is red. The sun emerges like the bulb on a red-back spider, the first of its splindly rays crawling out onto the earth and low to the ground, soaking up the heat. Pippa is a sunspot out in the distant fields. It’s as if she too is watching the sun come up, ears pricked to attention. A portent stillness grips the air.

Harry licks his lips and he can taste salt, sweat beading at the corners of his mouth as he stares out the window, the warmth glazed there like it’s sweating, too, the only measure of wetness before it becomes evaporated with the sunrise.

Hands braced on the benchtop, he lets his eyes drift to the telephone, the beady, glowing red of a digital _4_ staring back at him, blue light blinking. A test.

He reaches out—

“What time’s’t?”

Harry flinches, hand curling back towards his chest. A sleepy, ruffled Louis stands in the doorway to the kitchen with his fingers pressed to his eyes, rubbing them like he’s clearing away dust.

“Past five,” Harry croaks out, voice shot from disuse, the way it got for most of January.

“Ugh,” is Louis’ response. Harry can hear the dry click of his throat when he swallows, the low huff of breath when he rolls his shoulders back. His hair is a mess, just in a baggy shirt and boxers. It’s the first time they’ve said a word to each other in days.

The sun prickles upward, just a suggestion of something more to be found in those first little slips of gold shimmering at the horizon line, but the strength of it is enough to turn that window glaze from blood to rusted gold. The radio buzzes by Harry’s ear.

_“...what we’ve had in this morning is that there’s no chance of rain for March, but there’s…”_

“I feel so…” Louis flattens his palm over his chest. “So hollow, right here. Jesus.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Harry says. There’s a tickle at the back of his throat that he’s sure Louis is dealing with tenfold. “It’s just from the dust.”

Louis swallows thickly, that dry click again, then rubs his eyes and looks out past Harry’s shoulder, no doubt watching the light shift, stepping closer so he can see out to the endless fields, the spot where the sun is rising. His legs are bare, bruised shins knocked around from climbing in and out of the truck, a severe tan line already ringing his ankles.

“ _...the Bourke Shire should expect a new set of record breakers over the next few days, hitting the forties and beyond if the heat building down south continues it’s way up and over…”_

“How are things going with Molly?” Harry says, just as it looks like Louis’ about to speak again. “You almost done with that?”

“I don’t know,” Louis says. He scratches his elbow lightly, this little _scitch-scitch_ of skin on skin that makes Harry’s toes curl up. “Why?”

Harry inhales and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. This wasn’t supposed to turn into another disagreement, the morning too hot, far too early, but it looks like it’s going to. “I think you can figure that out for yourself.”

“Right,” Louis says, a huff of disbelief. “Thanks.”

“Sorry,” Harry says, but he knows it doesn’t come across that way, not with the way Louis looks at him. Good. “I’m not afraid to say what I think.”

Louis flashes his brows and looks back out the window, arms crossed against his chest. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Harry grits his teeth and follows Louis’ stoic eyeline to the horizon. He refuses to let himself get so pent up so early in the day, not when his skin is already crawling from the parched air.

Pippa’s figure bounds closer across the fields. The light is starting to fold over now, orange and pink splintering the red like a firework.

Distantly, Harry’s alarm starts to buzz.

-

They’re early today. The sun is still coming up, mulga trees shadowed and set in magenta clay, bruised reds blending with the dirt as they pull through the gates, all that sharp iridescence gathered and glinting atop tin, sharp like a knife on the sheds and the peaked roof and the barbed wire that runs atop the calf pen.

The resounding _bang_ of the truck doors closing echoes upward. Harry stands and surveys the stretch of ground he can see, sun sitting low on the back of his neck. Even the calves, usually so eager and needy with his arrival, do nothing but press their noses to the gate. Something is off.

It’s not until they roll into the paddock that Harry realizes why.

Molly’s out with the heifer and Harry can see the disaster from here. Angry red lines along it’s eyes and back. Thin, shaking legs folded in. Head hung down even as Molly tries her hardest to get the defeated heifer up and moving again. As Harry slows the truck he lets out a breath, unable to do much but grip the steering wheel and watch the heifer refuse to budge an inch. The rest of the cattle meander aimlessly nearby.

Molly looks up, face stricken. Harry finally snaps out of his trance and shoves the truck door open.

“What happened?” he says in a rush, bypassing Molly completely to get his arms up and under the heifers neck. It’s no use. With no will left in her to shift, she doesn’t even try to steady her legs. He could go back for the forklift, but it’d take him so long to get it out here, and Molly would have to tow the trailer—

“I don’t—. I don’t know. She just won’t budge,” Molly says. Her face is tomato-red, grey hair swept into a frizzy, tangled mess around her sweating cheeks. Harry tries to lift the heifer again. The heels of his boots take chunks out of the dirt when he slips. “The ravens must have gotten to her this morning—”

In a sudden flinch the heifer shakes out of Harry’s hold and rattles his bones. He puts space between them immediately, an arm thrown out to push Molly back with him. They can only watch as the heifer's nose bubbles anxiously, whole body huffing and heaving, so pent up with stress.

“Oh, God.” Molly covers her face and turns away.

Beady eyes, hollow bones, all that dust stuck along the heifers stomach. Harry puts his hands on his hips and hangs his head. The cuts are worse up close, a fleshy crosshatch made from talons and pointed beaks, bleeding out onto her ashen skin.

“What do you want to do?” Harry asks, tilting his gaze Molly’s way. She’s already clamming up. Misty-eyed. “Mol, we can’t keep her. We can’t keep hanging on to them like this.”

“I don’t want to,” she says miserably, a quiet sob working out of her throat. Struck by the morning sun like this, sweat shining golden rivets deep into her wrinkles, it terrifies Harry how old she suddenly looks. “I can’t do it. I just can’t, I can’t—”

There was only a short period of time in which Harry ever entertained the idea that things would get easier, that repetitive action lessens the blow. It seems now that everything comes back with twice as much force, and dregs up all he thought he’d pushed down forever along with it. By his side, Molly starts to tremble, shaking her head over and over.

Not even his greatest attempts at repression stand a chance in these moments. Seeing Molly like this always brings it back; that phone call, the glass, the sirens and the dust on the road.

“It’s alright,” Harry whispers into her hair, pulling her in and guiding her away, palm on her back as they head back towards the truck. It’s all he can do now, shield her and keep her away from it.

Through the glossed windscreen Louis watches on. Even though Harry can’t even begin thinking about giving him the time of day right now, his pulse still flares when their eyes meet. The confusion and curiosity in Louis’ gaze burns Harry right through the chest. With gritted teeth he tugs the door open and pokes his head in. “You should get out.”

“What’s going on?” Louis asks, undoing his seatbelt slowly, looking out to the lone heifer and back to Harry. Molly’s already moving, gathering the dogs and pushing them behind the cattle, moving them into the next paddock in a slow trickle.

“Just—” Harry opens his palm between them, then clenches it into a fist, swallowing down the urge to snap. “Go with Molly, okay? Walk back to the house. You don’t want to be here for this.”

Realisation dawns on Louis’ features. “Wait. You can’t—”

“Louis, I swear to God.” Harry stares him down. This isn’t a time for petty arguments or teasing, for anything other than compliance. “ _Please._ Just follow Molly and go.”

The air in the truck is unbearable, all that pure sun pouring through the glass and cutting at their faces. Like a seraph the light seeks Louis out and Harry hates that he notices, hates the sweat that shines on the tops of Louis’ cheekbones and the line of his nose and his top lip, a highlighted touch over the ridges of his knuckles. It’s impossible to deny the surge of rawness that curls in Harry’s stomach just from one lingering moment of observation.

He slams the door shut, unable to watch or wait for an answer any longer, andgrabs the rifle from the truck bed.

There’s already that low voice in the back of his mind, tantalizingly quiet, dark and edged rough and all tobacco stained. Harry clenches his teeth, approaching the heifer the only way he can. Quickly. Mind blank. If he slows or allows himself a second to falter, he’ll divert his path, drop the gun, and take off until the outback claims him as its own.

_Head up, boy. Steady now._

The heifer looks up at him like she’s already gone, not even a blink his way as he stands before her, legs tucked up under her body, weeping skin slicked against the morning sun. Harry’s hands shake as he inhales sharply and presses the barrel firmly between her eyes.

 _Step back now, boy, not too far._ His heel kicks up dust. _There. Barrel ten centimeters back._ He adjusts his grip. _Eleven for luck._

The heifer blinks up at him, just once, wet eyed.

_Hold tight, boy. Don’t go slack._

Harry’s stomach churns. A phantom palm digs into his shoulder, sweaty and coarse, that grating and terrifying voice right by his ear. Suddenly he’s thirteen again, trembling and slick-palmed with the old 0.22 slipping in his grip, all wide eyes and too long hair and the sun smacking down into the dirt like it was there just to hurt and be cruel.

_Lift a little higher, now. Not between her eyes, boy. That’s it. Up. Up, you’ll edge the bone. Up – there._

_Stop._

There’s nothing but his own pulse, blinding sun making his eyes water as he tightens his grip again, swallowing hard.

_Shoulders back, boy. Now—_

Ravens fly from their hidden perches in a swarm of screeching. The sound hits the ground and bounces back, that fatal, cracking _bang_ shooting outwards and shaking the brittle trees, travelling through them and outwards in an endless echo. Harry’s ears ring. Overhead, the ravens splinter and scatter and shift, souls ascending and disappearing into the ring of harsh sunlight, waiting.

It’s not even the sound of the gun that curls his stomach, but the heavy _thunk_ of where the bullet lands. The heifer stares up at him just as she did before, lifeless, very still, the very same way Bella’s mother did weeks earlier, all raven-torn and jagged. The first time Harry had to shoot one of them, that hand on his shoulder and tears in his eyes, he’d let the gun slip and had gone off target, the kick of the 0.22 smacking him so hard in the chest that he winded himself and threw up not a minute later, after Pop hit him round the head so sharply he saw stars.

And then he’d seen the blood, something he had nightmares about for weeks, waking in the middle of the night to the ringing, chilling rush of that sound flushing through the dead trees—the thud of sinking bullets.

In the quiet morning, ravens circling, Harry allows himself a single, broken breath, before he clamps his mouth shut and blinks away the wetness that’s trying to gather in his eyes. _Get over here, boy. Touch her. Make sure you’ve done it right, let’s see._

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers as he discards the rifle and crouches in the dirt. He thumbs gently over her skull to lift her lid higher, a cautious finger pressed to her pupils to make sure they don’t dilate and twitch, still warm and wet, a sensation that never fails to make bile rise up into his throat. He swallows it down and shifts his hands under her jaw, reaching for her tongue. “I’m sorry.”

When he’s done he crosses the dirt numbly and treats each pervasive thought like a hollow bone dried out from the sun, crushed under retreating foot. _People die every day. Animals die every day. It was the right thing to do._ Like mist they trail him, powder flicking off the back of his boots.

He puts the rifle back in the truck, pulls open the door, and freezes. Louis is still sitting in the passenger seat.

His face has gone completely ashen with what looks half like shock, half like disbelief. Harry doesn’t have it in him to even begin being angry, to begin asking if Louis is okay. Instead, he leans in, unclips the glovebox, and perches himself on the edge of the driver’s seat with the emergency cell that’s near-dead, feet hanging out the door. He puts his elbows on his knees and curls his body in to try and fake some shade so he can see the screen.

His shaky fingers struggle to dial the number, but eventually, he gets it right.

Alex picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, mate,” he greets.

Harry can hear the shuffle of movement already, keys clicking together. He closes his eyes. “Hey, Al. We, um. We need you down here.”

“What’s happened?”

Harry’s sure Alex already knows, but he’ll need to hook up the trailer, figure out how many cattle they’ve lost and who to bring down. With a rattling exhale, Harry rests his forehead against his palm, thumb and forefinger squeezing his temples.

“Just one this time. A heifer,” Harry says. “I’m really sorry. I know it’s early—”

“Give me an hour, mate,” Alex dismisses. There’s the sound of a door closing, a dog barking crackled and distant down the line. Harry lets out another shaky breath and tries to be comforted in the rush of noise. “You hang in there. I’ll be down with the trailer and get it all fixed up for you. Is Molly there?”

“She’s with the rest of the cattle.”

“Okay, good. Good. Don’t you worry yourself.”

“I won’t.”

“See you soon.”

“Thanks, Al.”

The crackling heat of the sun is a radio frequency, dialed in close enough to brush hair-raising static against the shell of Harry’s ear, breaking up the otherwise overbearing silence. Through the windscreen it sizzles along the ridge of his back, across his neck when he takes off his hat and runs his fingers through his sweaty hair a few times in a weak attempt at calming himself.

He doesn’t get dizzy like he used to, but he can never tell if this is worse. He almost yearns for the sickness that used to come in the aftermath. Now, the hot flushes of shame and nausea turn into a numbness, fingers clasped around his wrist as he sits hunched by the heat. If he pushes it all away there’s nothing to quell, just a nascent sensation that feels like it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel in his stomach with pointed nails, curling the wood there so slowly that his body has locked itself up to avoid being affected by it.

Along with the heat is Louis’ stare, but Harry ignores that, too. If he lifts his face he fears he might allow himself to burst into tears.

Across the paddock, the ravens have come down from their high perch in the sky, circling the heifer keenly; so bone white and still against the dust, it looks as though the birds have already picked her away to nothing.

A distant memory comes to him then, a forgotten night amongst many—Elijah’s hand on his chest in a dark bedroom, tracing his heart, young and in over their heads.

_I think I read it in an old book. They’re scavengers. It’s inevitable that they always fall back down to earth, just like us if the soul goes bad. When we die we can’t ascend. We have to come down to face our sins._

_Don’t worry, though. You’ve got a good soul._

A shrill maelstrom of sound erupts. Harry stares at the ground as the ravens finally dive.

-

Pippa is antsy. Restless with all that nervous energy she had as a pup, almost skittish in a way that’s toddler-like, like she’ll wander off and cause innocent trouble wherever she goes. When they step out of the truck, early noon upon them and the peak of the day’s heat coming to fruition, she refuses to stay by Harry’s side and instead runs circles around him until she becomes bored, shooting off across the empty fields, hunched in and wary when she stops to look back every hundred metres or so.

 _Run,_ Harry thinks. _I would, too, if I were you._

There wasn’t a word uttered between them on the drive back to the farm, nor during the entire process of Alex’s arrival, the heaving of the dead heifer into the back of the trailer, Harry’s attempts at diverting from conversation, the awkward pat on the back that Alex gave him, the half-sad smile of sympathy that Harry dreads like nothing else, and then worse, that clap on the back, the shake of hands and _you tell your old man I said hello, won’t you?_

Now, entire body aching, the phantom kiss of a bruise blooming against his chest, Harry can barely lift his feet as he drags his way inside, flyscreen smacking behind him, tumbling over the threshold, bypassing the need for water entirely in favour of escape.

The curtains are down in the living room, air so heavy that he’s almost stopped by the weight of it, wading through the space like drifting through dense river water. Louis’ things are strewn everywhere. It’s so, so goddamn hot. Harry clicks the door of his room shut behind him and leans his forehead against it to breathe, unsure if Louis even followed him inside.

Moments like these make all the small things around him so insignificant. Perched on the edge of his unmade bed, the single he’s had since he was a kid, he stares blankly up at the sun-faded posters on his walls, _Midnight Oil_ and _INXS_ and the obscure clippings he used to pull out of the newspaper. Barely legible now in their age, pinned to the walls like they have any real meaning outside of this little room and his own head.

Old desk made from sturdy wood, the chair Pop made him by hand covered now in chips and scars from childhood clumsiness, and from the frustration of what he is now, nights slamming drawers like it makes a difference, like maybe hundreds of kilometres away somebody might hear the thud of a book or the rattle of nondescript-but-sentimental junk in a drawer and come rushing in, a knight in rusty armour, ready to shower him with pity that he’s never wanted. The push and pull has him ready to tear his hair out.

He doesn’t realize he’s slipped his fingers into his fringe to tug until there’s a knock on the door. At the thin, tentative sound of knuckles on wood he sits up, the heat in his eyes subsiding as he composes himself.

“Yeah?”

With a gentle creek, Louis pokes his head into the room, cautious in the drowsy warmth.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Harry says, voice as firm as if he’d gotten up and kicked the door closed in Louis’ face.

But the sourness fades too fast for it to be real. Harry can see the exact moment Louis realizes that.

“I made you tea.”

The words are silvery and sweet, lacking that saccarchine charm that usually makes Harry’s skin crawl. Instead Louis looks down at his toes like he’s unsure of himself altogether.

Harry says nothing and stares at the twisting fingers in his lap. _A murderer’s hands, that’s what you’ve got. And you know it._ He hears Louis’ wary exhale, Harry’s lack of reply leaving everything between them wide open. Louis is first to make the next move. Before Harry can pull away or cross his arms, a flowery cup is placed carefully in his hands. The smell of it hits him, chest rising as he registers its familiarity. It’s the old herbal stuff, the brew Dad makes _late-late-late_ when Harry’s in bed, but the scent always lingers in the morning.

Mum’s favourite.

“It’s probably too hot for it,” Louis says. He smiles tightly. “But I thought it might help a little.”

Harry just stares up at him blankly. He doesn’t know what to think, or how to deal with the image of Louis digging through the cupboards in search of something he deems calming. Eventually, he clears his throat and sits beside Harry gingerly, visibly hesitating before doing so.

_You’re touching my sheets. Unmade. Messy. It’s all such a mess—_

“I’m sorry.”

“Please,” Harry says weakly. “Please, don’t.”

“No, I am–”

“The last thing I want is your sympathy, okay?” Harry says. The cup between his palms seems to be getting warmer, the smell of it nauseating. He doesn’t deserve reassurance or pity for deplorable actions. _I’m sorry_ only makes him think of the dust and the dead and circling ravens.

“I’m not trying to…” Louis drifts off. He looks up to the ceiling, seemingly searching for words—once he finds them, his gaze trails back down the wall in slow steps. “I was completely obtuse and out of line that night in the truck. I should never have said any of those things to you. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”

Harry blinks at him.

“This isn’t me trying to cover my arse, either,” Louis says. “Genuinely, Harry. I don’t—. I didn’t know what to expect, coming here. You threw me off balance and my first line of defence is always to try putting people in places that make me feel like I’ve got more control. It was wrong of me.” He hangs his head. “Especially considering the circumstances.”

Around them, dust gets caught up and swooped in the sun. Louis is looking down at his hands now and Harry observes them, too, bitten down nails and a tiny moon-scar on his right knuckle, that tan smoothness tainted by a fine layer of dirt.

“It’s not my place to…” Louis huffs a sigh and splays his palms on his thighs. “I’m just sorry. I really, truly am. And I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope at the very least we can manage to get along while I’m still around.”

From the back of the house Harry hears the dog-flap thud, the erratic scrape of Pippa shifting her water bowl along the old laundry tiles. She trails the hall, no doubt searching for them, and not a moment later peeks curiously into Harry’s room, as if to say _look! I’m here. I didn’t run away. I’ll always come back to you._

“C’mere, Pip,” Louis hums. Just a click of his fingers to snatch her attention and she trots to him easily, slipping his fingers into her short fur, rubbing up behind her ears. The nervous energy she cradled earlier seems to have dissipated.

She blinks at Harry, her eyes all beady and wet, panting mouth like a smile. _Still here, see?_

A lull washes over them. Instead of scratching behind her ears, Louis’ fingers settle into a slow and cautious stroke of hands over Pippa’s neck instead, like he’s been suddenly stuck and distracted with contemplation. The tiny smile on his face fades. Finally, brows furrowed, he looks Harry’s way again.

“What you did today…”

Like sticking a fork into a power socket, any sense of ease is shocked out of Harry immediately.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Pippa’s ears twitch at the tone of his voice, ready to listen for command, expecting a trill whistle and the stomping of heavy hooves on the dirt.

Louis regards him with clear concern. “Do you _ever?_ ” he asks. “Talk about it, I mean.”

Nobody is ever around to ask, afterwards. Pop and Dad never did. You shoot them and you move on. No questions. No contrition. It might be the earthy, familiar smell of the tea, or the way the light warms their backs from the window that does it, but Harry is hit with a sudden flush of honesty, fiddling with his fingers.

“It hurts too much. It’ll only hurt more to mull over it.”

“Maybe it’d help, y’know,” Louis says delicately, aware of the fine line he’s treading. “In the long run? Maybe—”

“Louis.” Harry closes his eyes momentarily. “I can’t—. I just need time to myself right now.”

Between them, Pippa becomes distracted by the bright flutter of spinning dust, following a low trail of it back out into the living room, and without her presence the atmosphere between them quickly becomes tepid, their feet half-brushing as they both stare down at the floor.

Even just the smallest slice of vulnerability has Harry aching; each time he shifts he can’t help but feel as though the rough hands on his shoulders never let go, squeezing and squeezing for as long as he can remember, and now, more so than ever.

“I know it doesn’t count for much,” Louis says, then, fingers linked between his knees, “but if you want somebody to talk to, off the record, I’ll listen.”

There’s a pause, Louis waiting for some kind of indication that Harry’s heard him. Around them, that pulsating, heavy light brushes up the walls and magnifies the cracks, the splits in the skirting and the crinkles in the posters and the lingering dust on untouched, ghostly shelves.

Harry is paper thin. If he held a palm to the sun all the riverbends of his slow veins would show through the veneer of his skin, just like a dying leaf. The very idea of that translucence is too frightening to linger on. He’d rather burn up altogether than sit stagnant on the edge.

Soft as a sigh, Louis rises, and once the door to Harry’s room snicks closed and the low, mundade murmur of the television sneaks up from underneath the crack, he presses his fingers into his eyes until he summons sun flares.

-

_‘You have five new voicemail messages. Last message received—first of March, nine-twenty a.m.’_

A beep.

_“Hey, kid. I, um. I hope you’re alright. I know it’s two months, today, so keep your head up. Give Molly a big hug for me. I haven’t heard from you in a couple days. We’re hitting forties here and I just wanted to make sure things are okay, y’know? Is Pippa still eating? You remember what happened to her last time, so just keep a close eye, alright? And let Ev keep a close eye on you. I’m sorry that I’m not there. Alex called and told me what happened. I’m worried about you, kid. I know that’s the last thing you want to hear, but I am. Please take care of yourself. Don’t lock yourself away, alright? I know I’m not there, but I’m still—. I’m with you. I’m just a phone call away, mate. So just, um. Just call me. Whenever you need it, okay? Please. Bye.”_

-

Dark and hazy, sunsets like this have a way of faking the gathering of clouds, those gradient colours splitting and stirring together to make shadows, hollow pink and sharp orange and the bruised black of night time bleeding slowly through the canvas of escaping blue, until nothing remains but a smudging of colours warm to the touch, coal burners that flare with the pressure of the air, the shift in the atmosphere, the scorching last exhale of the sun before it dies.

Harry watches smoke rise up, the silky grain of it blurring with the dark vignette of the sky. _Altostratus,_ he recalls. _A storm full of rain approaches_. Grey haze blankets his vision, and just for a moment the fake, cloudy blur of the sky allows him feeble hope for a night spent listening to the rattle of tin. _Nimbostratus._

“How are things with old mate, then?”

Harry glances Jai’s way, attention pulled from the slowly morphing sky.

“Who?” Harry says. Jai rolls his eyes.

The pub is a hot-low pulse behind them, and here, with the ashray on the cobweb ridden table all smokey and warm, their feet up either side of it, they’re lit only in darkness and the firefly ring of shrinking cigarettes.

Jai tips back further in his plastic chair, wobbling a little as he inhales, all skinny twig arms and shaggy hair and gentle curiosity.

“Louis,” he says, coughing on the exhale. “Your journo pal. You’ve gone all quiet on me. I’m starting to think he’s playing mind games with you or something, like _SVU._ Or _Frontline_.”

“You couldn’t have picked two shows that have less in common,” Harry says flatly.

“Well, then?” Jai says, unperturbed, wobbling back in his chair again as he rolls his heels against the tabletop.

“It’s fine,” Harry says, staring intently at the hot bud between his fingers. “I just thought it’d all be over with by now.”

Cigarette almost burnt to nothing, he inhales long and slow before leaning forward to stub it out. His chest is sticky with sweat and flushed pink from the still sweltering heat that lingers, and it only flares as the smoke tickles the pits of his lungs and then streams back out, chin and nose slicked with little beads of perspiration. Yet his mouth is so dry, and he wants nothing more than to shift the conversation back to the _NAB Cup_ and Jai’s lemon of a truck and all the things that have absolutely nothing to do with the dirt and the cattle and the empty, barren cotton fields. And Louis.

“Surely he’ll pack up and head off soon, though,” Jai says.

“I guess.” Harry shrugs. He toys with a loose thread at the bottom of his shirt. “It probably depends on how much he impresses his suits. I’m just tired of getting home from Molly’s and having to see another person in my space all the time.”

“Jeez,” Jai says, a woosh of breath as he exhales a steady plume smoke, eyebrow raised. “Tell me how you really feel, H.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Harry snaps, rolling his eyes at the look Jai shoots him. “I wasn’t talking about _you_ , dickhead.”

He expects Jai to come back at him with another quip, a quick and snide remark to make them both laugh and settle into a comfortable silence, but nothing comes. Harry glances over. Jai’s face is pensive as he stares back, cigarette loose and forgotten now between his bony fingers.

“I hope you don’t mean it, y’know,” he says, biting the side of his cheek. “We like having you around, Tils and I. Tilda, Jesus—it’d break her bloody heart to hear you say that.”

Harry’s throat is suddenly full of bugs, swarmed and fluttering as the guilt takes only half a second to fester. He contemplates reaching for another smoke, something to do with his hands, but Jai’s eyes have him trapped. Harry is helpless but to supply an answer instead of running away.

“Of course I don’t,” he says. “You guys are my family.”

Finally satisfied with that it seems, Jai folds down his legs and stubs out his cigarette.

Harry goes upstairs not soon after, once Jai’s pulled him into a tight hug and promised him a beer later, and being faced with the narrow staircase is enough to almost stop Harry in his tracks despite what he’d told Jai not even ten minutes ago. He can hear the telly going, the low chug of the rangehood over the stove, the muted splatter of Ev showering. Absently, Harry scratches at his elbow and shuffles upwards, faced first with Ned’s back as he carves a small roast, carrots gold and crisp in the oven. Pippa is glued to his side and waiting for any possible remnant of food to drop into her waiting mouth.

A dewy old candle illuminates the centre of the dining table, all of the curtains and fabrics in the room pearled in honey-yellow from various lamplight, and by the corner, at the little desk shoved against one of the windows, Louis sits with his back to Harry, hunched over and typing fast, a can of Coke at his side and a pink sunburn blushing over the nape of his neck. Harry only allows his eyes to linger there briefly. Then he takes a seat at the table and drags the discarded newspaper there closer, flicking through to the puzzles to pick up where Ev left off on the daily crossword.

Ev emerges not soon after in shorts and a worn _Bintang_ singlet, wet hair still wrapped up in a flowery towel atop her head. She smiles when she sees him and places a warm palm to the back of his neck to draw him closer. The tension in Harry’s shoulders begins to dissipate immediately. He just hopes he doesn’t smell too much like smoke, and that if he does she’ll ignore it.

“Smart cookie,” Ev muses, looking down at the near filled crossword.

“I helped him with all the answers,” Ned announces from the kitchen, a winning smile sent their way as they roll their eyes. Not a moment later, he’s swearing _bloody dog_ under his breath and nearly stepping on Pippa’s toes.

Ev rounds the bench and reaches for the oven mits. She and Ned fall into easy conversation. Harry watches them with a sudden and covetous need gnawing at his heart; the way they shift around each other is so natural, so simple, reaching for plates and cutlery and flicking switches and filling the sink with soapy water, this intricate and familiar dinner dance routine that two people nurture and learn from each other with time.

He looks back at the crossword and finds that he can no longer concentrate.

Dinner is quiet. Louis is as polite and charming as ever, and has Ned in stitches recounting a wild and theatrical night on King Street after a story runs about it on the news. Harry pushes food around his plate. He can’t stop thinking about what Jai said, the way his face looked with the sun coming down. Genuinely concerned, hurt by Harry’s carelessness.

“Harry?”

Then his thoughts shift to Tilda, whether Jai will tell her, whether they’ll corner him and express their worries and pack him up in one of their cars for another trip along the highway. He can’t think of anything worse than trying to explain himself to Tilda after everything they’ve been through, knowing how much he’d hurt her, how much he’s already letting her down now—

“Harry, love.”

Ev’s reached across the table to place a gentle hand on his arm, and Harry blinks rapidly, looking up at her. On his plate, his food is a colossal mess.

“Sorry, what?” He tries for a smile, making sure Ev knows he’s here and listening. He’s fine.

“I was just asking how Molly is, lovie,” Ev says. She gives Harry another squeeze before she retracts her hand and leans back in her chair. “She was supposed to give me a ring over lunch, but I haven’t heard from her yet.”

“Oh. She’s okay,” Harry says, looking down at his plate. He clears his throat. “She wasn’t there, when I…y’know.”

“She told me she was going to call you,” Louis says, then, and Harry cuts his gaze towards him, as does Ev. “Maybe she just forgot? She did say she was expecting a call from the bank today, as well.”

“The bank?” Harry lowers his fork. Molly hadn’t mentioned anything this morning. “About what?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Isn’t it your job to be in her business?” Harry says sourly, and sees the surprised flicker in Ev’s face across the table.

“ _Harry._ ”

“Sorry,” Louis mutters.

Which is the exact opposite to the biting comment Harry expected back. A heavy blanket of uneasy silence descends over the table.

Harry’s cheeks heat immediately. He stares down at his plate and wishes the floor would swallow him and his puerile temper into a pit of embarrassment. He’s frustrated with Louis. And even more so with himself.

Ned clears his throat. “If everyone’s finished, why don’t you grab our plates and start washing up, kid.”

The prickling warmth doesn’t leave his face for a good few minutes. Facing the old tiles, elbow deep in soapy water, Harry focuses first on getting his breathing to steady, then on settling the shaky rattle of his chest as he scrubs a sponge over their dirty plates. Behind him the telly blasts whatever sports channel Ned’s flicked over, and down the hall there’s the sliding of cupboards and drawers, all of it a blur that folds over his shoulders. Tucked into the sink like this, he feels small and useless.

Even though it reminded him of that night in the truck, of Louis slipping in those little jabs and riling Harry up, tonight’s conversation was purely innocent. Louis _just_ apologized for his behaviour. This time around, Harry was the one to twist and turn things to try and cause hurt, using a still tender grudge to justify his reaction over a mistaken omission.

 _Hypocrite_. _Add it to the list, kid._

Cautiously, he risks a glance over his shoulder. Low in his eyesight, Ned’s already fallen asleep with his head lolled against the couch, half-drunk beer no doubt warming in his sweaty palms. Behind the couch and back at the desk, Louis’ eyes are heavy, chin in his palm as he flicks through the pages of his notebook, engrossed in whatever it is he’s reading over. His hair is a mess, greasy and flustered the very same way it was the first time they met, all gold-outlined by the lamp behind him.

A tiny _beep_ sounds. Louis glances up at his laptop screen with squinted eyes.

Like waking from a dream, his spine straightens to attention quickly, notebook forgotten beside him as he scrolls. Harry watches the shake of his hands, the slow exhilaration of his movement as he uncrosses his legs.

“Ned,” he announces, not looking away from the screen. Ned snorts to life on the couch. “Can I borrow your phone?”

“Sure, mate,” Ned says indifferently.

Louis is up in an instant, crossing to the kitchen bench and lurching for the phone. He punches the number in quickly, and as he waits with it pressed to his ear, hand on his hip and lips bitten into his mouth, their eyes meet, Harry with his arms still buried in soapy water, Louis’ sudden elation stuttering as they watch each other.

The line must click over, because the moment breaks.

“Dave? Hey—yeah. It’s Louis.” There’s a brief pause. Louis’ got his shirt bunched up in a closed fist, foot tapping. “ _Seriously?_ Are you—. Holy _shit._ ”

Louis brings his hand to his mouth, eyes bunching up as he starts to smile.

“Yes, of course. One hundred percent,” he says, the hand over his mouth moving to flatten over his chest. Ev’s emerged from the hall, leant by doorframe with a smile and half-damp hair framing her face. Ned watches on from the couch. “Send it all through. I’ll—yeah. You’re not pulling my leg, right?”

Harry puts the last plate in the rack and finds Louis’ gaze again. They become locked in a stalemate that Harry doesn’t know the context of, Louis still listening to whatever is being said to him down the line, but he’s distracted now, eyes roaming over Harry’s body once before their eyes click back together.

“I really want this, trust me, I’ll just, um.” Louis says, still searching. “I’ll have to get back to you, to confirm. I’m not sure where I’ll—”

He pauses.

“Oh, alright. Amazing. Thanks so much, Dave. Cheers, mate. Bye.”

There’s a moment of silence, the rattle of the phone being put back, the telly filling up the space between them all.

“That sounded important,” Ev remarks.

“It was my boss,” Louis says on a shaky exhale. “I sent a draft over yesterday and they want to run it on the front page, do a full spread—”

“Good on you, mate!” Ned stands to shake Louis’ hand. “Putting little Bourke back on the map, you are.”

Ev comes over then, too, offering Louis a warm hug. All the while, Harry stands by the sink with soap-suds up to his elbows. He knows he’s supposed to say _congratulations_ but he can’t get the word to come out, can’t figure out why. Idle panic has lodged itself in his chest and made it hard to breathe.

“There’s more, though,” Louis says, pushing his hair back from his face. “If the article goes well they’ll want a follow up, and Dave, my boss, said he’s been in touch with _60 Minutes_. They like the angle so much they want to run a cover story, and they want me to be a part of their production team. Like, gathering information and conducting pre-show interviews and—I don’t even _know_ yet.”

“Oh, how exciting!” Ev says, brightening.

“I’m in shock, honestly,” Louis says with a short laugh. “But I don’t want to overstep with anything. It’ll take time for the story to run and for the people involved to figure out what they want to do with it, and then there’ll be all the organisation on the production end. I might need to interview you or more of the farmers and I don’t want to—”

“Louis,” Ev pauses his ramble. “It’ll be fine. You’re more than welcome here, you’ve shown that much.”

“Thank you,” Louis says, hand on heart. “I promise I’ll do whatever I can to make sure things are done right. I could even—. I could get onto sponsors to provide hay and pellets and groceries. If they do end up putting something on telly I want to make sure you can benefit from it properly.”

“Don’t get yourself all flustered, now,” Ned fans Louis with his hands, the two of them laughing.

“I’m not, I’m not,” Louis waves him off. “The only thing is, I’d need somewhere to stay more permanently. I wouldn’t want to—”

“I’m sure Harry doesn’t mind having you around for a little longer,” Ev says, sweet to Louis’ ears, Harry’s sure, but Harry could pick up on the tone and the pointed look Ev gives him anywhere, anytime. “Right, lovie?”

“Right,” Harry says, and pulls the plug from the sink. The water gurgles obnoxiously.

As he turns away for a tea towel, he doesn’t miss the way the brightness in Louis’ eyes dims a little. Stiffly, Harry wipes away the remaining suds that cling to his skin.

_Just when you thought you’d gotten rid of him…_

“Only if it’s okay, though?” Louis says.

“Sure,” Harry says, feeling the very antithesis of sure. “As long as you don’t mind the springs in the pull-out.”

“I don’t,” Louis says, all smiles. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

Harry shrugs and ducks to scratch behind Pippa’s ears so he doesn’t have to show his face. His eyes are getting misty. “We should get going. It’s almost dark.”

“You could stay—”

“We’re going, Ev,” Harry says. In the low light, Louis manages to catch his gaze. “Early start."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! i love hearing your feedback and thoughts so please feel free to leave some here or come visit me over on [tumblr.](https://harrybridgers.tumblr.com) i'll hopefully post chapter 3 within the next few weeks if i can keep on top of editing/writing this thing!! ♡


	3. Chapter 3

The shirts and jackets and bits and pieces strewn all over the living room begin to carry permanence. On the little clothesline inside, their things are mixed together and semi-protected from the dust. The old Holden parked out front is slowly but surely buried and turns from white to red. The plates in the dish rack are nearly always coupled. Some nights Harry cooks steak and vegetables or pasta, but most times, reheats the meals from the freezer that Ev bulk-made him.

At the table, he and Louis attempt to share stilted small talk.

Louis reflects on Richmond in a way Harry hadn’t quite expected, slightly detached, so much so that Harry only understands on a surface level. Maybe that’s not unintentional. Maybe he can read into it because he does the same, keeping Louis with only his toes in the water of their conversation pool any time the current is directed Harry’s way.

Pippa is a buffer between them, threading herself back and forth under the table and their legs, so comfortable with Louis’ presence now that often when Harry thinks she’s gone running off at night she’s actually been asleep at Louis’ side, curled up on the pull-out while he types or writes in his notebook. Harry sits at the dining table or in his room with the radio close by and ignores the flash of blue from the telephone.

Some mornings he wakes to find that Louis is already up and sitting with Pippa on the veranda, a cup of tea made up for Harry that he never has the chance to protest against, steaming and fresh. Other times, when the heat is heavy through the thick curtains in the living room, Harry has to wake Louis with a hesitant touch to his bare shoulder.

They eat breakfast silently and watch the dirt fly in the wing mirrors on the way to Molly’s, where Louis will poke his hands through the calf pen to serve as a distraction while Harry feeds them one by one, and out in the dry paddocks, he hovers as Harry and Molly check over the cattle, the three of them having an early lunch together most days while Harry goes over their bills and types into the old calculator until it’s time for Molly and Louis to talk.

They’re basically attached at the hip at this point, but Harry refuses to let him in. And refusal may not even be the right word, but it’s easier to slap that label on and embrace bullheadedness than to admit he’s uneasy at the thought of letting his walls crumble.

So he tries to keep to himself when he can, even as Louis draws closer to Ev and Ned, as nights spent at the pub turn from ambivalence and tension into a time for chatter. Louis is getting to know locals one by one. Tilda and Jai are now happy to accept him into their little group.

In the eyes of many, Louis is an interloper no longer.

The grace period is over and now Harry is the obdurate odd one out. The one who can’t let go. The one who can’t give in. It’s driving him up the wall.

-

The article runs on a sweltering Sunday, so dry that in the morning Harry looks out the window and finds the entire stretch towards the horizon shot through in misty red. Even without the help of a breeze the ground is crumbling, hazy-hot and grainy in a way that makes it harder to breathe. Out in the paddocks the cattle moan and shift like the dead. As for many days past and many days to come, there is nothing to be done but push through the heat.

They drive to Bourke that afternoon, Louis with his laptop and leather case over his shoulder, biting anxiously at the loose skin by his fingers the whole way. He’d mentioned something offhandedly to Harry about the emails he’s going to be waiting on tonight, and hopefully a few phone calls from his boss, any initial reactions from competing papers and _Nine Network_ , but it had been quick, like he thought Harry wouldn’t care.

Harry isn’t sure if he cares. If he does, it’s probably for the wrong reasons.

Tucked at the back of the pub, he watches the quiet bustle around him. There’s a half-eaten plate of parma and salad pushed into the middle of the table, an empty glass with froth clinging to the lip at his side, and finally, after nicking it from an empty table, a copy of _The Sydney Morning Herald,_ sister paper to _The Age_ down south, in front of him.

Bourke is splashed across the cover.

The story takes up a full two pages inside, followed by a similar bunch of articles from a different writer, something about rumours of a desalination plant for Victoria, another in Sydney, and what the Howard government plans to do about their worsening water supply in the face of Labor's own set of reallection promises come November.

Harry pulls his focus back to the article written by one _Louis Tomlinson._ A picture of Molly and Pat as the header behind the title text jars Harry before he even manages to begin the article itself. His gaze bounces between their smiling faces and the picture of the wreck on the side of the road, two images that just don’t seem right together.

Steadily, he takes in a breath, and begins reading.

_For Victoria, our state of emergency rests on the word low. Low levels of urban water, low levels of moisture in the air, lower than average rainfall. But here, spending weeks among nothing but dirt and dryness, there is an obvious and impending sense of matters far more pressing and disastrous than we could ever imagine._

_No water. No grass. Not a single drop of rain._

_For residents of the Bourke Shire and its surrounding towns…_

Harry skims, trailing through the obligatory introductions and statistics, the setting of the apparent scene. He doesn’t want to hear Louis’ interpretation of their lives. Instead, he sweeps through until he finds what he’s looking for. Molly’s story. And his throat only tightens the longer he reads on.

Louis describes it all just as Harry thought he would; clean, simple, empathetic. But to his surprise it’s coupled with an emotional, driven narrative, interlaced with pinches of profound, sweet, and devastating words from Molly, like Louis was there at the scene of the crash itself.

It leaves Harry’s skin prickling.

The article isn’t even bad, not at all. But it still doesn’t seem _right_. Maybe it’s because of how close it is without actually being close at all, these experiences locked completely inside Harry now splayed out on paper by somebody who wasn’t there, and the words of those who experienced it funnelled through this secondary entertainment lense. He supposes, then, that he should give Louis credit where credit is due. It’s making Harry feel something, but he isn’t sure what that feeling is just yet.

Distantly, like a dialed in radio frequency, he thinks of this paper in Dad’s hands.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

Harry snaps his head up. Hands behind his back, leaning in, Louis somehow manages to appear both apprehensive and eager all at once.

“It doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?” Harry says casually, watching the eager side of Louis’ expression give fully into apprehension. “As long as your suits like it, you’ll be fine.”

Louis frowns, and then in a move Harry wasn’t expecting, pulls up a chair to join him at the table.

“You should know by now that your opinion matters most to me.”

Harry looks away. He wasn’t expecting those words, either. He toys at the edge of the crinkled paper.

“You’re a great writer.”

“Thanks,” Louis says, and seems genuine, warm, and not at all put off by Harry completely deflecting from the original question. “Means a lot.”

Harry skims the article again quickly, catching on Molly’s accounts of her childhood, and then parts of his own, though he’s not explicitly named. It’s always _the kids, the boys, Elijah and his friends._ He wonders if that was done purposely or not. Molly talks about the Darling before it started to dry up, the _wonderful years_ there, the _perfect summers._

Aware of Louis watching him, Harry taps his finger against the words.

“If you wanted, I could take you there,” he says quietly.

“Where?” Louis questions. He leans closer to see.

“This part of the river run,” Harry says, looking up briefly. Their faces are close. He sits back in his chair. “It’s not behind Bouke. It’s in Louth. That’s the place she’s talking about here.”

Louis’ eyebrows raise, a clear look of surprise casting gradually over his face. “Really? You would?”

“If it’d help,” Harry says. He isn’t sure what he’s doing right now, or what’s come over him. “For the show, or whatever.”

“That’d—. Yeah.” Louis huffs out a laugh. “That’d be really great, actually. Thanks.”

“It’s fine.”

The low hum of the pub falls over them, telly and the clink of glasses and muffled voices, indistinct music playing in the next room over. Harry closes the paper and pulls his plate back toward himself, stabbing a fork through his left over salad. He eats silently, but Louis doesn’t leave.

Harry risks a glance and is met with Louis’ steady gaze, bottom lip bitten between teeth, the cogs of his brain working behind his eyes.

“Did you need something, or…?” Harry trails off, chewing slowly.

Louis laughs under his breath and rubs his palms on his thighs. “No. I guess not.”

They regard each other curiously until Louis finally takes the hint and pushes back from the table, making his way over to the bar instead. Harry lingers on his back as he goes, the line of his shoulders, his nape. Catching himself looking, he stares down at his plate and refuses to acknowledge the warmth in his cheeks, or the way Louis’ own had begun to flush pink as he stood and turned away.

-

White-hot light reflecting, a yellow so pale it burns to look at. Like glancing into the sun as a child when you know you shouldn’t and blinking away the stars that burst behind your eyelids in the aftermath of that furtive peek.

Under their hands, the dry remains of what once was a wet river wall clings to their palms like crushed chalk. As they slide down the steep incline of the bank it hangs suspended around them, the only source of movement on the lifeless bed of the Darling.

Across the chasm, ravens pick at fish bones and the hard ground in search of hidden bugs, circling and rummaging through the clumps of dead leaves. Standing at the bottom is equivalent to standing beneath a magnifying glass. The sunlight bounces off the ground with a glare so sharp that Harry’s eyes water behind his sunglasses, hat tipped low to shield him from the afternoon sun. Beside him, Louis does the same, adjusting his too-big borrowed Akubra to properly cover his face.

Silently, he wanders to the centre of the river, hands on his hips, staring out into the emptiness like he expects a giant swell of tumultuous water to come roaring around the corner.

This particular stretch of the river lies behind Louth, similarly to the bend that hugs close to the edges of Bourke, which is gorge like and a shudder of wind away from collapsing and swallowing the township whole. Here though, with its slopes and corners, the Darling widens and plays with the earth around it like a game. It’s the stretch they’ve used for skiing since Harry could get himself up on a kneeboard.

Now, it’s arid. The dead gumtrees that frame the river have curled and crumpled like the hands of skeletons, one hazy riverbed nightmare away from scooping bodies up in their bony grasps to dry out in the sunlight, too. Along the edges of the bed, the tree roots are cracked open and hollow, the sun already done with sinking it’s teeth in and sucking all the blood away, sucking the life out of everything right down to the marrow.

Speechless, it seems, Louis turns to look at Harry over his shoulder with his mouth agape.

They walk the whole section of the river run, from the north bridge to the last corner, right where the river begins to straighten out for a few kilometres, irrigation pumps bone-white and covered in dirt, all dried up. On the walk back, Pippa trotting ahead, they kick a rock between them until it skids to the edge of the bed.

They climb out where the Hilux is parked beneath nearby trees and sit, covered in sweat.

“I can’t believe how dry it is,” Louis says eventually. He scoops his hands through the dry leaves beneath their legs. “There’s just. There’s really nothing.”

The trees do little to provide any shade, slices of yellow heat splayed over their skin through stripped branches. So far out from town it’s quiet in a new way, just the occasional rustle of ravens down below and the minute movements their own bodies make as they shift amongst crackling twigs.

“We rely on the river to grow everything,” Harry says, arms slung over his knees. “We don’t have enough tank water to support a full summer’s worth of growth, and without rain or the irrigation pumps there’s no way for us to draw water up onto the farm. It’s a waiting game.”

Louis writes in his notebook as Harry talks,squinting against the light with his sunglasses tucked into his shirt. Sitting like this, the ache in Harry’s shoulders intensifies, the morning at the Robertson farm leaving him strung out and tired. Maybe that’s why he’s being so cooperative. 

“Molly told me they’ve lost almost a thousand cattle,” Louis says, pen tapping. “Did they go as soon as the river started drying up? She explained it to me, but I didn’t really dig for details at the time. Numbers and the…logistics, of all that loss. I was focusing more on the people here than I was the livestock.”

“It was slower, at first,” Harry nods, fingers wrapped around his wrist. The words are powdery in his mouth. “Two years ago, I think, they lost most of them. We had to shoot so many. It was really awful. Have you heard of Anna Creek?”

Louis shakes his head, pen still on the page.

“It’s a cattle station in South Australia,” Harry says. “There’s this place in Texas, I think, called King Ranch. It’s the biggest station in America. Anna Creek is seven times bigger than that. It can hold over sixteen thousand cattle. Do you know how many they have now?”

Again, Louis says nothing.

“Fifteen-hundred,” Harry says. He runs his hands through the sticks around him, picking up one at random to draw aimlessly through the dirt. “We haven’t sent cotton bales off to a spinning mill in three years. Dad’s kept us afloat through the stock market and bargaining with banks. I take it Molly’s already told you all about that.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. “She mentioned it.”

Harry continues drawing through the dirt, little crosses and swirls, distracting himself from the rush of blood through his ears as he talks and attempts to keep his voice low and even in the same way he does with Molly, with Alex when he has to call him in for another case of _humane destruction_.

“How long has it been like this?” Louis asks.

At the bottom of the river bed, Pippia eyes off the ravens that linger in the trees.

“Nearly as long as I can remember.”

Harry lowers his gaze as the memories start to wash over him, the bright but unthreatening sun, the reflects of it in the water. Laughter, clinging to Elijah as they swung around the bends on ski-tubes like a pair of ragdolls, mouths filling with river water when they inevitably toppled in together. Dad and Mum and the rest of the Robertsons in the boat, hands on their hats to stop them blowing away as they sped through the Darling.

“My mum left when I was eight,” Harry says. “Every moment afterwards has just been…”

He gestures weakly out to the empty riverbed, unsure as to why he’s brought her up now, and why he felt compelled to share something so personal. But it’s true. Since that day, all that’s followed holds so much weight. It’s become increasingly difficult to recall anything significant from the earlier years of his life. There is very little that measures up to the dryness and helplessness that started to consume him as he grew up, save for a few key memories that hurt just as much as the dryness does.

As soon as the words leave his mouth he wants to clam up, roll down into the riverbed, and burn to avoid Louis’ eyes. He’s stopped writing altogether, Harry notices, just a few lines scrawled in the pages of his notebook despite how much Harry’s been letting himself talk.

“It feels so impossible,” Louis says. He’s looking out to the river. “It feels impossible that it could be this way.”

“The mighty Darling,” Harry scoffs, flicking the stick down over the edge of the bank, dirt catching and floating up as it falls. “There’s not even a puddle of water left in her now.”

That must spark something. Louis brings his pen back to the paper, underlining the large scrawl he writes there. He taps his pen against the side of the page.

“I know I’ve said thank you, before,” Louis says, turning to look at Harry. Under the noon sun, his eyes are cast pale-blue and framed by gold lashes, all the tones in his hair lit that way, too, skin a mismatch of warm and cool where the light falls in through the trees. Harry watches him with his breath held. “I’m going to say it again. Thank you. For letting me stay. For bringing me here. All of it. I know it’s difficult to share these things.”

Below, a small huddle of ravens snap at each other, the sound echoing up into the quiet.

“You’re welcome.”

As the silence settles again, Harry closes his eyes.He’s tried to convince himself that he doesn’t know why he brought Louis here, but the pull in his chest is impossible to ignore, almost gravitational. He finds himself revisiting these places only when he can construct a valid excuse to do so. It’s been a long time since he’s come back to the Darling in particular.

Above them, the old swinging rope has now snapped clean in half, frayed at the bottom, but there was a time he and Lij used to jump into the river, pushing each other with wet palms on warm backs to fling themselves as close as they could to the other side, their skin dappled with sunlight and the green tinge of eucalyptus.

There have been many memories made by these trees. Those curious looks, those wavering touches, so precious and far away from everything now that it hurts deep to attempt revelling in them. It’s hard not to reflect on his childhood and adolescence every time he comes to this spot. That’s likely the reason why he never comes here, but finds himself stuck the second he allows himself back.

There is happiness in this river, and days of good sun. But there’s grief, too. Separation. And that painfully overwhelming day. That crunch of tires, that stentorian disapproval. Even now, years later, it shakes his insides up.

He opens his eyes, momentarily stunned by the dazzling brightness.

“We should go,” he says, and stands before Louis can catch a look at his face. “It’s too hot to be stuck down here.”

-

Days later, he finally forces himself to pick up the phone. Afternoon is coming to a close. The sun is restless and refuses to leave and pokes brutal fingers through the slats in the blinds. On the front veranda, Louis sits by the steps with notebook in hand, Pippa sleeping beside him, bathed in gold.

Harry can’t bring himself to listen to the voicemails waiting for him. Instead, he dials and bites the side of his finger into his mouth. It goes through to voicemail.

“Hi,” he says, a sudden wave of shaky guilt cascading down over him as the reality of how long it’s been hits. “Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

He stops, unsure of what to say, jabbing his thumb into a dent in the benchtop.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called back,” he says. “I should have tried harder to stay in touch, but…I’m sure you’ve seen the article by now. There’s been so much happening.”

_There’s a man on our couch. He’s been here for weeks, and I didn’t tell you, and I still can’t. I should tell you before you hear it from somebody else. I can’t. I can’t._

“They think the weather might break,” Harry says, even as his skin flares with the heat coming through the window. The crown of Louis’ head looks set alight. “It’s doing the cattle in, but we’ll be okay. And I’m okay. I’m just fine, so please don’t worry. Everything is under control.”

There is so much more he needs to say. He should be bursting to explain the details, to tell Dad that everyone is thinking of him and that Pippa is still wandering the fields and through the sheds searching for the traces of him. Harry draws up nothing but static as he listens to his own breathing down the line.

 _I miss you_ , he thinks of saying, but he can’t stand the thought of what might happen if he allows those words to come out.

“I’ll see you soon,” he says instead, just as Louis starts to stand, brushing himself off and stretching, shirt rising up along his back and revealing the slight dip of his spine. Harry snaps his eyes to the bench. He’s on the phone with his Dad, for God’s sake. “I’ll be in touch.”

The flywire creaks just as he puts the phone down. Louis, apple-red in his cheeks from the heat, throws his notebook onto the kitchen table and heads for the fridge.

“Is there pasta left over?”

“I think so…”

“Want some?”

Louis turns with a container in hand after a moment of rummaging, shaking it Harry’s way, tiny smile brushing the corners of his mouth. Harry presses his thumb into the dent again, and wonders how Louis sees him, slumped posture and hit behind by dying rays, trying to mask how badly he feels over all of this. The very fact that he even cares what Louis thinks of him at all makes his skin crawl.

“Maybe later,” Harry mutters, sliding out of his chair and ignoring the roll of Louis’ eyes as he leaves the room, Pippa following close behind.

-

One afternoon of half-vulnerable truths, and Louis’ apparent quest to slowly invade Harry’s space continues at greater speed. He is everywhere. All the time. So Harry has to keep a close eye, and make sure he’s ready to ward off the easygoing smiles and the casual questions that others have already started to embrace.

He listens closely.

He watches and lingers and looks away when Louis looks at him.

He watches and lingers and quickly realizes he’s feeding his own vehement mistrust. A habit of his own doing.

He finds himself looking in from the outside and noticing details he shouldn’t. Like the tan sinew of Louis’ wrists, or the toned muscle of his arms when he offers to help Harry lift barrels of molasses onto the back of the Hilux. His jaw when he tips back and laughs at one of Jai’s terrible jokes. Soap suds clinging to his pink elbows when he beats Harry in volunteering to help Ev with the dishes, the two of them chattering easily about the plans for Ev’s birthday, so close now.

If Harry has to wake him with a touch to his shoulder, he doesn’t stick around long. Louis’ eyes are always hazy and he blinks awake and stares at Harry in the half-dark like it’s the first time he’s ever seen him. Harry pulls back without a word and hides away in the kitchen while Louis shuffles around the living room.

They’ll make their tea and lean their backs along the bench and often Louis will murmur a tired _g’morning_. They fumble through conversations in the stillness and Harry shies away from the cog-turning look in Louis’ eye, watching his toes instead.

Louis starts to come into the pen with a bottle of his own, halving the feeding time. The calves are so used to his presence on the outside of the fence that they take to him quickly.

The nights spent at home leave Harry restless, trapped either in his room or the kitchen, or out on the front veranda when Louis chooses to set up his computer at the dining table. He feels like he doesn’t belong anywhere,like he can’t be in the same space, listening to the little _click-click_ of keys or the brush of pen to paper or the sound of pages turning without it sending his mind reeling.

Other times, late, Louis will flick on the telly, the screen sending a carnival of colours up along the walls, and Harry, lying on his side atop his sheets, will watch the flashes of it that slip beneath the crack in his bedroom door, listening to the low hum of static and voices, and sometimes catching Louis’ quiet laughter or a whisper to Pippa if she’s still around.

On this night, the telly’s been left on, and as Louis enters the kitchen to make a late night cup of tea, Harry only spares him a glance before closing the newspaper in front of him and standing. It’s late and he means to go straight to bed, but as he passes through the living room he picks up on the theme music almost instantly, stopping short by the couch as the title sequence plays, a flicker of nostalgia worming it’s way through the gaps of his ribs.

He perches on the edge of the pull-out before he can stop himself, back slumped with his hands clasped between his thighs.

“You know I won’t be mad if you want to sit on the couch and watch TV. This is still your house, mate.”

Harry turns. Louis is leaning against the doorway. Lit from behind by the barely there glow from the kitchen, his face is hardly visible. The shadows of the hot living room crowd him, and leave only the wet of his eyes and the high points of his face illuminated by flashes of television light.

In his hands, where Harry expected tea, there are two sweating bottles of _Corona_.

“I know,” Harry says awkwardly, not moving.

Louis huffs a quiet laugh and rounds the back of the couch. The springs creak a weak protest as he sits cross legged and tries to get comfortable without spilling anything from the bottles, one of which he holds out to Harry with a winsome smile. A peace offering, Harry suspects. And a bit of a tease.

Harry relents and takes the beer with a roll of his eyes, shuffling onto the couch properly, back against the cushions, legs splayed out, trying not to grab for the unmade sheets bunching up underneath him.

It’s quiet for a long time. Louis mutters answers under his breath and swears if he gets them wrong. Pippa curls up at their feet and Harry tears at the edges of the label on his bottle until it goes fuzzy, sweat stuck along his top lip, acutely aware of how close his shoulder is to Louis’ each time either of them shifts.

Soon, Harry finishes his beer. Louis clinks their empty bottles together.

“Another?” he says. “I’ll restock you out of my own pocket.”

“Go on, then,” Harry sighs. Louis rises with a triumphant hoot and a squeak of springs. Harry stares down into his lap and waits.

Eventually they fall into some form of comfortable silence, broken apart by Pippa’s muffled snores. Louis’ fingers tap a syncopated and distracting rhythm into his bottle. Harry focuses on keeping his eyes on the telly, the pale screen burning the edges of his vision in the heavy darkness.

The show cuts to an ad. He glances to the side and finds Louis returning his gaze, lolled against the back of the couch. Elongated this way, the telly light illuminates the planes of Louis’ neck, the underside of his jaw. His shoulders and collarbones, where the loose tank he’s wearing droops and stretches across his body, shine too.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” he says.

“What is?”

“This.” He waggles a finger between them. “Us, sitting within a metre radius and not trying to kill each other.”

“Don’t jinx it just yet,” Harry says.

Louis pouts. “Ouch. How hopeful I was…”

“It takes more than a beer to win me over,” Harry says. “I’m not that easy.”

“I figured that out pretty quickly, yeah.” Louis tilts his head. “Who says I’m trying to win you over?”

Harry shoots him a look.

“Okay.” Louis throws up a palm in submission. “Maybe I am. Just a little.”

The ad cuts out, music and audience applause filling the room as the show continues. They turn their attention back to the television. Another few minutes of quiet.

“I was joking, by the way,” Louis says, under the sound of buzzers and rapid-fire questions. “I know I’ve put you in a weird position by being here. You don’t have any obligation to entertain me.”

“No, I don’t,” Harry agrees easily.

Too easily, it seems, for Louis’ liking. He perks up and turns to Harry like meerkat. So much for that nanosecond of peace.

“Is this about the show?”

Harry rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “I guess.”

“We don’t even know if it’s going ahead,” Louis says. “I haven’t gotten any concrete confirmations from my boss, and if it does happen, well. I’d tell you. It’ll be a good thing, Harry.”

All those cameras, all those people, rifling and shuffling through the information from the crash and the case that have finally been laid to rest. There’s a reason Harry avoided going into Bourke when the entire town was crawling with journalists and the police were still putting the pieces together. They did their job and they left. They closed the case.

Louis’ article is one thing, but an entire program dedicated to investigating and exploring their lives just draws out the grief and draws out the guilt. Harry can’t go back to that place. He exists there in his nightmares often enough.

“I don’t want to be part of it,” Harry says. “I don’t particularly care how good it is.”

“Okay,” Louis sighs. “But you should know, Molly is considering it. There are other farmers on board to talk. Not just about Pat, but about everything the drought has affected, too. _Nine_ might turn it into a series, or something. Visit further north.”

The bottle in Harry’s palm is still half full and going warm. His stomach has twisted up. “Molly is so important to me, Louis. And she’s vulnerable. I do my best to take care of her but if this all happens, please don’t let them harass her or make Pat’s death into a spectacle. It’s hard enough on us as it is.”

“That won’t happen,” Louis says. “I promise.”

Harry shakes his head. “Don’t promise me anything, either.”

“Even if I pinky swear?” Louis holds out his pinky dramatically.

Harry bats his hand away. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”

“I’ll try anything to get a rise out of you, darling.”

Harry purses his lips. Out of annoyance. Not to curtail a smile. Louis is much the same. There’s a glimmer in his eye that comes only from sufficient feather-ruffling.

After some time, he says, “Molly’s fond of you, too. She makes a point of telling me so.”

Harry picks at the _Corona_ label, turns the bottle in his hands. “We take care of each other.”

“Ev is the same,” Louis continues. “It’s sweet, the way they are with you.”

“How’s that?”

“Unyielding love,” Louis says, with a wave of his hand. “It’s so rare, and you have it in spades.”

“I suppose,” Harry says. _For now._ “You don’t?”

Louis’ answer is a shrug. One leg sprawled on the bed, the other close to his chest, bottle resting low on his stomach. Harry watches his hands, then draws his eyes back up, throat thickening. _Stop it. Stop it._

He looks between Louis and the television a few times before he forces himself to stare ahead. Louis shifts and they settle back into silence, _Spicks and Specks_ almost over.

“My mum loves this show,” Louis comments, taking a slow swig. “What’s the other one called that lets guests play, too? I always forget the bloody name of it.”

“ _Rockwiz?_ ” Harry guesses.

“That’s it.” Louis clicks his fingers. “She always wanted to go on that. I’ve got no doubt she’d take the cake. She’s such a gun with this stuff.”

“So is my dad,” Harry says. He points to the cabinet full of tapes and CDs. “He used to tape all those shows before they started airing reruns. He’d watch them religiously so he’d win the trivia nights they used to have at the pub.”

The whir of VHS tapes is a sound Harry knows well. Late at night, he’d listen to the scribbling sound they made when Dad would rewind them all back. He recorded anything and everything, from _Hey Hey It’s Saturday_ to _Countdown_ to the reboot of _Keynotes,_ labelling them and storing them away ‘just in case.’ Even if the episode wasn’t worth keeping.

There’s one Harry remembers most, only from a couple of years ago. Paul Kelly did a cover with Katy Steele of _This Mess We’re In_. Dad would sit on the edge of the couch for hours with his guitar and try to fumble along, wearing the tape out until it started to crackle.

“Where is he?” Louis asks, head tipped Harry’s way again. “Your dad, I mean.”

“I’m sure you already know the answer to that.”

“Maybe,” Louis says. “I’d rather hear it from you, though.”

Harry tries not to let those words affect him, to hide the way his brows raise a little. He wants to look away and stand and slam his bedroom door behind him like he’s eight years old all over again. But Louis still has this strangely open look on his face, their legs splayed out together, leant close with sweating bottles of beer pressed against their stomachs.

“Sydney,” Harry finally says. “After what happened with Pat, he just…he needed the help. A few of them went across together, some of the sheep farmers further west and a few of the local boys from Bourke. It was all a bit much.”

“Do you speak often?”

Harry can’t look him directly in the eye. He glances towards the kitchen. “Here and there.”

“And your mum isn’t around, you said,” Louis continues, like he’s piecing things together.

“She’s not around.”

Harry can’t tell if Louis is playing him like a fiddle or if he’s giving this up all on his own. What he does know is that he can’t seem to stop.

“I get it,” Louis says, and this time, he’s the one to look away, down at his beer bottle, fiddling with the label, lashes cast low. “It was just my mum and my siblings when I grew up, though she went through boyfriends and husbands and bad breakups every few years like her heart was a revolving door.”

“You have siblings?” Harry can’t help but ask.

“Five sisters,” Louis says fondly. “I don’t see them much, these days. They’re all kind of split between my mum and their dads.”

“Full house,” Harry comments. “I’m sorry. You must miss them.”

“I do. All the time,” Louis says. “What about you…?”

“Oh.” Harry scratches behind his ear. “It’s just me. At least I think so. I don’t really…know.”

He’d be lying if he said he's never thought about it. As far as he’s aware, Dad isn’t in contact with Mum at all and hasn’t been since they finalized their divorce, so there’s no way for him _to_ know.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, wincing slightly. “That was a stupid thing to ask.”

“You’ve asked me stupider.”

“And that’s not a word.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

They watch each other in the dark. There’s sweat shining on Louis’ top lip, hugging his nose, dewed in the spot his collarbones show. Harry doesn’t know what to say. He’s unsure of what to do with this sudden fragility. Their eyes are caught, a near reflection of one another, and only when the flush in Harry’s cheeks becomes too much does he look away, Louis doing the same, colour flashing before their eyes as the heat sleeps warm and settled along the backs of their necks.

-

At three in the morning, Harry wakes with a start.

The little red letters on the clock blur together as his shaky vision gradually sharpens. On his side with his arms tucked up around his chest, sweat licks close at his jaw and the back of his neck. His hair is damp and disgusting and through the crack in the curtains a slice of moonlight brushes over his shoulder and runs in a thin line up the wall.

He doesn’t remember what he was dreaming about. As he sits up, he tries to swallow against the cracked out dryness of his throat, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He tucks his knees into his chest and waits for the dangerous knock of his heart against his ribs to settle down enough for him to breathe.

There was a flash of dust, almost white like fog, because it was nighttime, that much he can recall. And then a sparkle, something shimmering out in the distance, the highway winding and endless, topsy-turvy and grotesque and nothing like reality.

The longer he sits, the easier it becomes for him to piece things together. He presses his forehead firmly into his kneecaps, hoping to rid himself of the thoughts that start to pervade through the impressions of the dream, the white-hot sun instead of the blue darkness, sirens and glass prickly to the touch.

Swallowing again, he swings his legs over the side of the bed gingerly and puts his elbows on his knees, hands running through his hair over and over to try and shake the memory away, to stop it crawling up his spine like the scratch of fingernails.

The water bottle by his bed is crinkled and empty, the one by his feet tipped on its side and crumpled. Sighing, exhaustion gripping him, he stands. At night all the aches in his body are magnified, like in the blue-dark the air is thicker than water, and wading through it takes more effort and energy than his feeble body has. He’s so thirsty, entire mouth dry, heat gathering at his neck from how much he needs a drink, but when he manages to find the doorknob in the dark, he pauses.

There’s shuffling out in the lounge. It’s likely just Pippa coming to check on him, but the longer he listens, the less it sounds like her. No tiny footfalls. No snuffling against the crack under the door. Then he hears it, the springs in the couch, the heavy sound of sheets hitting the floor. Paused, breath held, Harry listens, parched tongue going heavy in his mouth when he hears a faint exhale, another creak from the pull-out bed.

A quiet moan.

It sounds bitten down, held in the chest, distant and dream-like where it drifts through under the door, and Harry is frozen. Wide-eyed. One palm spread flat over his stomach, the other still vice-gripping the doorknob. A steady flush rushes down his entire body, this pins-and-needles prickle that starts at the top of his spine and skitters, toes curling up as Louis moans again, cut off abruptly, muffled. 

Wordless, head coming to rest heavily against the door, Harry closes his eyes and slides the palm on his stomach down.

Just the pressure has him biting at his bottom lip. He doesn’t move, swallows thickly again and listens to the rustles and Louis’ loud breathing, moonlight touching the back of Harry’s neck and sweat beading up along his temples, damp curls heavy along his forehead, stuck to his chin as his mouth slowly parts, as he presses the heat of his palm against himself.

_This is wrong. Stop. Stop it. Stop it now._

A gasp, the rustle of sheets again. It goes on forever, nighttime stretching and twisting like a warped dream. Until, after a beat of strained silence and a long release of breath, Louis hisses a stifled curse.

Feet touch the floorboards. Harry’s eyes slide open. He tries to listen to Louis move over the heart hammering in his chest. The footsteps fade. A flush of water, barely detectable, from the bathroom down the hall. Then Louis is moving back into the living room, couch creaking under his weight. The rustle of sheets.

Silence.

Harry’s knuckles ache from how tightly he’s holding the doorknob. Reluctantly, he lets it go, stepping back towards his bed without a sound and collapsing onto it.

He sits on the edge of the mattress and with his head in his hands, attempts to begin breathing through the stunning waves of mortification that consume him. Blood rushes through his ears so quickly he becomes dizzyingly nauseated. He digs his elbows into his knees, face still covered, to steady himself. And to anchor himself against the urge to stand and peek through the door.

Unbidden, a flicker of murky images start to play across his mind. The moonlight dancing through the living room curtains. Sweat-slick shadows on Louis’ body. Arms strained, and the muscles in his calves taut, and his burnt nape glistening. That tilt of his jaw and his eyes clenched shut, thin lips parted and shined smooth and damp, something for Harry to suck on, to drench his dry mouth—

 _Stop._ He breathes heavily through his nose, fistfuls of hair curled tight between his fingers. He wills himself to think of other things, even to recall his dream to scare himself out of the place he is now, and then, in a last ditch-effort to terrify himself, he recalls real memories instead. Anything he can to get his drifting, tired mind to stop wandering as it pleases. Hot sun and Lij driving away into the distance and the shimmer of that cross beaming out across Louth.

Slow, like his body and his mind are out of touch with one another, he lies back down and brings his knees to his chest, faces the wall, and prays for sleep.

-

The pub is alight. All around, patrons don scarves of maroon, blue and yellow, the usual red and white begrudgingly put away for the nights occasion, and at the bar the taps flow heavy and fast for those who can mange to foot the bill, gold brew and cans opened and plastic straws bitten between teeth from their perch in spirits and ice. Smaller tables have been brought out into the main room, chairs clustered together, and as Harry threads himself back towards the centre of the colossal mess, three beers balanced between the triangle of his fingers, he tries not to let his hips knock against any potentially deadly corners.

It’s grand final night for the _NAB Cup_ , and the Lions are taking on the Blues, and it’s apparently their obligation to barrack for the northern team. From the jukebox, Ned’s got Johnny Diesel & The Injectors blasting, pre-game spirits easy and fun, not a stress in the world without the Swans in the mix.

Through the flurry of conversation and laughter, Harry finally makes it back to their table, where Louis and Jai are still knee deep in their argument over who the better midfielder is, Kirk or Koutoufides. Harry rolls his eyes as he sits, laughter already bubbling out of him at the look on Jai’s face. He has no doubt Louis might be winning their little tiff.

On nights like these the atmosphere is different, a rare occasion in which what is always omnipresent manages to become an afterthought, if only for a little while. Harry finds himself settling down into his seat and looking up at the telly, the pre-show almost over now.

“Tell him he’s _dreamin’,_ Harry,” Jai says, animated and over the top, making a sudden grab for the front of Harry’s shirt to shake him. “He’s absolutely lost it.”

“I’m not taking sides,” Harry says.

He couldn’t even if he wanted to. He knows shit-all about the inner workings of the game despite Ned’s constant attempts at teaching him.

“It’s not even an argument!” Louis says, taking a long sip of his fresh beer. “Just on goals _alone_ Kouta kicks Kirks arse any day of the week, mate.”

Harry can only laugh as Jai tries valiantly to defend himself. 

Soon, the room begins to properly fill, townsfolk taking their seats once the players are on the field and warming up, banners torn to bits, theme songs done and dusted. Ned jostles over to sit with them, Tilda and Paula in his wake. Together they crowd up, the room so stuffy it’s almost hard to breathe, and watch as the game begins.

Tilda gets comfy with her chin on Harry’s shoulder, familiar perfume drifting close, and she mutters commentary and quips into his ear as the ball moves about on screen. Carlton kicks the first goal and Louis, the only southerner in the room, makes a big show of it, hands cupped around his mouth as he sings— _we are the navy blues—_ in a low and booming drawl, much to Ned’s disgust. The two of them ruffle each other's feathers jovially for the entire quarter.

As time goes on, Harry has to force himself to stay present, taking in the heat and laughing as people shout across the room at each other, soaking things up the way he should, beer cradled close to his chest. The siren sounds and chairs scrape, a mad rush towards Ev for refills at the bar, and at their crowded table Ned launches immediately into a play-by-play of how the Lions can stay in the game and take down the Blues.

“There’s no chance,” Louis says, fingers spread on the table. “Fev’s kicking goals right out the gate.”

“Ah, _Fev,_ ” Jai sighs dreamily, fanning himself and causing laughter to ripple around them, Harry’s own mouth tugging up in a smile at his familiar antics. “Now _that_ is a man, ladies and gents.”

“I always knew you were a poof,” Ned says.

Jai howls and nearly falls out of his chair as he tips back with a hand flat on his chest.

The banter continues. Tilda and Jai wipe their eyes with their held laughter. If anyone says anything Harry’s way, he doesn’t notice. The haziness is gradual, all the sounds around him distorted and hollow like they’re coming from a radio two rooms over. He tries to be subtle as he pushes back from the table in an effort to slip away, but it backfires as soon as he remembers that Tilda is sitting right behind him.

She grabs his wrist, thwarting his attempt to weave between the miniscule space of two chairs.

“You alright?” she says, staring up at him with that little frown between her thin brows.

“Fine,” Harry says stiffly.

Tilda keeps frowning, and Harry keeps staring, until finally, she relents, and lets him turn in hasty retreat from the overbearingly stuffy air.

He stumbles outside. The sky is flushed pink and gold and marred with dark streaks. Dust flies on the long strip of the mainstreet. A group of kids are playing cricket with a wheelie bin as their makeshift stumps. Pippa is among them, chasing the ball as it’s bowled down the red dirt and then sprinting after it as it’s hit away.

Going from the wet, humid air inside to the dryness of the night in disorienting, and on shaky legs he crosses the street to where he left the Hilux. They got here too late to park around the back.

Inside it’s almost verging on too hot to breathe. He turns the car on just to wind down his window, then flicks it off again.

Even outside he can hear the dull murmur of the pub, and behind him laughter and shouting carries up into otherwise quiet night, little girls with bare feet caked in dirt and boys with their burnt noses, faces set and tongues poking out the corners of their mouths as they bowl towards the faded bin. The entire street is hazy with sunshot dust.

Harry wraps his arms around his churning stomach, closes his eyes, and sinks down into the seat like he’s melting.

His body is deceptively still and sluggish despite how fast his blood is pumping, how painfully his pulse knocks against his temples. He’s unable to do anything but sit. It’s the only way to cope with this kind of vertigo. If he’s still, he can pretend to disappear. If he can blink himself out of existence, there’s a chance this feeling will leave him.

With a sigh he lets his chin loll onto his shoulder, and stares at the darkening sky in the wing mirror, that pink colour now tainted ruby-red, the sun getting ready to leave it’s hot imprint and wait with giddy alacrity to rise upwards again.

Eventually, his eyes slip closed. Every so often there’ll be a raucous collection of shouts from the pub, or the _thud_ of the cricket ball hitting the wheelie bin and the triumphant echo of children laughing and calling scores, the scuffle of their feet among the dirt and Pippa’s excited-yet-impatient barking when the game stops too long for her liking.

It helps to take him out of his thoughts—for a little while.

The door on the passenger side swings open, and Harry’s insides twist again.

“Tils—”

“Not Tilda.”

His eyes snap open. Louis is leant against the door frame with a curious smile, the two of them frozen still, watching each other. Harry knows his cheeks are going pink. He hurries to sit up and brush himself off. Louis somehow takes this as an invitation to hop up into the passenger seat and close the door behind him.

“It’s halftime,” he says, twisting and bringing a knee up to his chest so he can lean his back against the window, facing Harry head-on. “The Lions are up on the Blues and Ned’s made it his personal mission to rub it in my face.”

_Great. Peachy. Wonderful._

“Serves you right,” Harry says, staring at his knees. “You shouldn’t have talked them up so much.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Louis says, laughing as he shifts, trying to get comfortable. Through the glass the dying sun filters across them in patches, pieces of splintered gold catching the edges of his face and lashes, the ridges of his knuckles where his fingers are linked together around his raised knee.

Harry turns away, out the window towards the pub, trying to feign some form of indifference at Louis’ presence. But the longer the silence stretches on the more antsy Harry becomes. He cups his fingers under his thighs. Digs in.

“It was too hot in there,” he says, explaining himself unprompted. “Just—needed some air.”

Louis hums, low from his chest, and Harry is sent back a few nights previous before he can get a handle on his thoughts, to the dark and the heat and his dry mouth, the muttered curses that slipped under the door. How suspended and desperate everything felt. How Harry pretended the next day that everything was fine, that he wasn’t running on two hours sleep or terrified to even look in Louis’ direction in fear of giving himself away.

A surge of frustration comes over him, tightening his chest, and with gritted teeth he leans his elbow on the windowsill and puts his chin in his palm, fingers curled up tight to try and release some of the tension coursing through his body. Maybe he could shove Louis out and drive away. Drive and drive and drive until the fuel runs out. Drive east, all the way to the city. Drive west until the desert swallows him whole and desiccates him—

“Harry, are you okay?”

Eyes burning, Harry flicks a cautious glance over his shoulder.

Louis stares intently. A stare to match the weight behind his words. It’s not like the other times he’s asked.It’s right from his heart and Harry is unable to speak, swallowing against the swelling lump in his throat.

“I don’t know,” he finally manages, turning away. If his eyes do flood over, nobody will see it. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just…”

“Upset,” Louis finishes. “By what Ned said.”

Alarmed, Harry looks back over his shoulder far quicker than before.

Louis is nothing but calm, blinking at Harry placidly like he hasn’t just dropped a bomb in the space between them. The engine of the Hilux is surely ticking down the seconds until it combusts and takes it both with them. It may as well be on fire. Harry’s cheeks are aflame.

Before he can even attempt to answer, a cricket ball comes whizzing past the window and smashes straight into the wing mirror.

“Jesus— _fuck!_ ” Harry shouts, flinching away as the glass splinters. Shards of it spray down onto the dirt road and skid across the windowsill.

Heart thudding, he whirls in his seat to look out the back window. The kids on the street all stand with their hands covering their mouths. Pippa is barking at the excitement. Jaw clenched, Harry shoves the door open, glass tinkling as it falls.

It cracks under his boots, and that sound…immediately he sees the shine on the open road and the sun beating down and his hand over his mouth, Dad tugging frantically on the back of his shirt and the dark mark the tires left on the edge of the—

“Sorry, Harry!” It comes from the batting kid, one of the Fitzgerald twins, Jake. A scrawny boy, all knobby knees and dark hair, an exact copy for his brother, Ben, the clear bowler of the fatal ball.

He sends daggers Jake’s way. “ _Nice_ one, gaylord.”

“Shut up!”

There’s a burst of muffled laughter, the kind that comes from kids in trouble, laughing when they shouldn’t be, giggled and still edged with the fear of being told off. Wordless, Harry stares at the broken mirror, not a single shard of glass left.

Everything is spinning too fast for him to register.

“Boys! What the bloody hell’s going on?” From around the side of the truck, Trevor Fitzgerald emerges, thick bearded and flushed from the heat, staring between the little crowd of kids and the broken mirror and Harry’s stony face.

“It’s not _my_ fault Ben throws like a bloody girl, Dad,” Jake complains, arms up in innocence.

“Language,” Trevor warns, rolling his eyes as he makes his way over to Harry. “Mate, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Harry answers robotically.

He hasn’t seen Trevor in months, not since the Fitzgeralds moved back into Bourke and gave up their farm, the last of their sheep sold off for well under their asking price, debt chasing their tails into a tiny two bedroom at Bourke’s dry centre. They used to drop in here and there and the boys would run rings around Pippa, but Harry hasn’t even thought to call, and the guilt of that layered with everything else his brain is throwing at him does nothing for his mounting dizziness.

“Don’t even worry about it, alright?” Trevor says. He claps a firm hand on Harry’s arm. “I’ll get it fixed up, all on us. Bloody kids, right?”

“It’s okay, really,” Harry manages.

Something is off. Little stars have gathered at the edges of his vision, popping and bursting on repeat in tandem with the sound of the wing-mirror smashing. There’s glass wedged in his boots and sudden waves of hot flush breaking against his neck and a ringing in his ears. God, he’s losing it. He can’t breathe.

He must make some kind of conclusive end to the conversation with Trevor, but he doesn’t recall his mouth moving, or their hands shaking, vision going dark and then light again as he tries to steady himself.

“ _Harry._ ”

All his ribs feel unscrewed, hot pressure around his wrists.

“Harry, look at me. Harry. Harry.”

He opens his eyes but is unsure of when he’d squeezed them shut. He can almost feel his pupils dilating, retracting, adjusting.

There are hands holding his own. He manages to look up, and he’s met with Louis’ face. It’s Louis’ hands. Louis’ thumbs rubbing over the backs of Harry’s wrists and down, squeezing his fingers in steady pulses.

Harry exhales in a sudden rush.

“There you go,” Louis says, squeezing firmly, releasing only when Harry has inhaled and exhaled again. “Breathe. You with me?”

Harry nods stiffly.

“It’s alright,” Louis says. “You’re alright. You’re here.”

As his mind starts to clear, he registers everything around him in pieces.

First is the audible way Louis is breathing, Harry matching up the rise and fall of his own chest subconsciously. Second is how close they’re standing. Louis must have slid across the bench seat, because he sits on the edge of the drivers side now with Harry standing between the v of his legs, knees bracketing Harry’s torso and their arms folded in close to their bodies. Third is the concern in Louis’ eyes, when Harry is finally brave enough to meet his gaze.

“I’m fine,” Harry chokes out. Louis squeezes his hands again.

For a brief, unimaginable moment, Harry wonders what would happen if he linked their fingers together, and shaken by the thought and all that’s just happened, rips his hands away entirely, fingers curled up tight to his chest as he steps back. Glass crunches under his feet.

“I’m _fine._ ”

Louis just stares, hands slack and eyes searching. Then, exhaling silently with a slow collapse of his chest, he slides out of the truck and places a light touch on Harry’s arm.

“I’ll go tell Ev you’re not feeling well?”

Grateful but unable to show it, Harry nods and ducks his head. Louis brushes past and crosses the road back to the still humming pub, laughter and shouting spilling out in a stop-start as the door falls closed behind him. Harry watches after him and when he’s finally alone, climbs into the Hilux gingerly. He brushes the glass away and allows himself a few shaky, sobbed breaths before he clamps his mouth shut again, wiping his palms roughly against his eyes.

“Get it together,” he mutters through gritted teeth.

A flash of gold catches his eye and he glances up through his fingers. The last of the day’s light shines on the edges of the case, Pop’s wrinkled face smiling at him from behind chipped glass. Harry’s throat closes up all over again. He looks away.

-

Often he finds himself missing the days when he thought the morning sun was gentle, opening the curtains and closing his eyes, young and smiling as he felt the heat gloss over his lids and touch his cheeks with the warmest _hello_ imaginable.

Down in the pen Harry’s streaked with sweat, the farmhouse towering over them all, and as the light bites at anything it can, his wrists and the little slips of his neck as he bends down, his face for the second he tilts to it, he can’t help but be filled with this terrible nostalgia over how much he misses waking up without wanting it all to be over. The calf at his side is thin, sucking weakly at the bottle Harry’s given it. They need pellets, but Molly can’t afford pellets, and watching them all start to thin and grow sick makes his chest ache.

On the other side of the small pen Louis plays with Bella, her knobby knees clicking as she follows him in slow circles and tries to chew at his shirt, nearly bowling him over if he refuses her for too long. Harry, surrounded by the remaining calves, all eager for their breakfast, watches with tired eyes and says nothing.

It’s late morning, nearly lunch, when they shuffle inside after feeding the cattle out in the paddocks. Usually he would find it an offense to even consider sitting on Molly’s lounge suite in his dirty clothes. She keeps it so tidy, hand-quilted cushions coordinated with fuzzy throws, pillows fluffed and angled perfectly. They rarely sit here anymore. But the moment Harry steps into the air-conditioned house, he drifts there and collapses.

He hasn’t been sleeping well, is the thing. Worse than he normally does.

Listless, he flicks through the channels until he lands on _Lifestyle_ , something mindless that he can look at without really taking in. There’s a repeat episode of _Location, Location, Location_ playing that he’s seen three times. He knows soon he’ll be shooed out into the pen while Louis talks to Molly, but for now he lets the muscles in his body relax, cool air ruffling his hair as it drifts down.

He doesn’t mean to nod off, and wakes with a crick in his neck so terrible he can barely move, arms tucked up into his chest, legs sprawled all over the couch. Blearily, he rubs at his dry eyes and sits up, hand steadying his sore back. He winces. Molly’s couch is just like Ev’s. Way too giving compared to the stiff mattress he uses at home.

Faint brushes of gold are pouring in through the lace over the windows. It can’t be that late, can it? Blinking heavily, Harry turns towards the kitchen.

At the dining table Louis has his laptop open, watching Harry closely, fingers paused over the keys. Harry bypasses him for now, gaze jumping instead to Molly, at the stove mixing a large pot with a wooden spoon. Just the smell of it has his stomach curling pleasantly. He recognizes it right away.

“Mol,” he says, voice all croaky, and though her smile is warm when she looks over, Harry can see the concern layered beneath it.

“Good evening, Sleeping Beauty,” she hums. “It’s about time you joined us.”

Harry presses his knuckle into his eye. “Sorry. I don’t know how that happened.”

With a groan he manages to stand, shuffling glum and tired towards the kitchen. His eyes almost bug out of his head when he reads the clock there. It’s nearly six. _Shit._

He reaches up into one of the cupboards and fumbles around until he finds the big box of medicine Molly keeps handy, diving through it for the panadol.

“You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you, lovie?” Molly says.

Harry glances at her, his mind already made up just by the way she’s looking at him. He wouldn’t have a choice even if he wanted to say no.

There is an incredible sweetness about Molly making him alphabet soup, and at the same time, a heaviness. It reminds him both of the trickles of happy memories he can recall from childhood and of the year that Mum left for good. Molly used to make it all the time when he came over, when Dad palmed him off for the better so that he could talk to Mum without Harry in the house, to keep him separated from it all, Harry’s realized now.

He’d often stay the night, and every time he walked through the door and smelt the roasting of tomatoes and chicken stock and herbs, it instantly warmed him. And best of all, Elijah would be there to greet him with a tackling hug, pulling Harry by the hand down to his room to read books and play with their _Lego_ and day dream until it was time for dinner. On those nights, Harry often fell asleep with his head in Molly’s lap, watching television until his eyes couldn’t stay open any longer, always lulled by the repetitive, tender way she’d brush his thick hair back from his face.

Over dinner, he and Elijah would slurp the liquid from their bowls until they were left with only the letters. At first it drove Molly mad, but her sternness always cracked when they started to make words on their spoons, spelling out their names and silly things, always encouraged by Pat, who in their eyes was the master of finding letters that weren’t _a_ and _e_ and _o,_ and often sent them to bed in stitches at the cheeky words he would make while Molly ushered them away. Later, Molly would scold Pat for it, but it always turned into the two of them collapsing into laughter, the sound of it bouncing down the hall to Elijah’s bedroom.

Staring down into his bowl now, Harry tries not to get caught up in it all. He gives Molly a smile and says his _thanks_ and starts eating, body warming in that gentle, morning sunshine through the window type way that he’s missed so dearly. At his side, Louis eats with a smile on his face, too, and Harry wonders if this strikes memories for him, if he’s thinking of his own family, his own childhood.

They haven’t really spoken about the night in Bourke. Mostly because Harry has avoided bringing it up and prayed that Louis won’t. Harry drove them home silently, and once they were inside, Pippa lingering around Harry, refusing to leave him be even as he went to bed, all Louis offered him was a not-quite smile and a tentative _sleep well, yeah?_ Harry has a feeling there was more he wanted to say, and Harry had things he could have said, too, things like _thank you_ and _I don’t know what happened_ and _what did you mean when you said—_

“Mol,” Louis says. “This is delicious.”

“Thanks, lovie,” Molly says.

“D’you remember that tinned stuff?” Louis muses. “What was it called?”

“ _Alphabetti Spaghetti_ ,” Molly says with a laugh.

“Yes, that’s right! I used to eat that by the kilo.”

Under the familial glow of dining table light, he and Molly go back and forth easily. Harry watches and listens and sorts through the letters in his bowl. Way too many vowels, this time around. His head is all over the place.

“This one would always steal _Dunkaroos_ ,” Molly is saying, gesturing Harry’s way with her spoon and bringing him back into the conversation. “He used to try hiding all the wrappers in his pockets.”

“Can you blame me, though?” Harry says. “They were the best.”

“They were pretty good,” Louis agrees. “Although, I feel like _YoGo_ trumps any snack purely for that claymation bus ad. A minute and a half of pure chaos, all for some yoghurt.”

“Oh, God. I’d forgotten about that,” Harry says, and finds himself laughing. He and Lij used to channel surf to find that thing. “My snack hoarding was all Ev’s fault. She used to give me those every day after school. Eventually I just became conditioned into eating them non-stop.”

“Speaking of,” Louis says, clearing his throat and directing his next words to Molly, “We’re all going to the pub for Ev’s birthday on Friday night, if you wanted to come with us?”

Harry lowers his spoon. Any lightness and warmth from his chest is very quickly sucked away. He had been planning on telling Molly about the party. Just not in the middle of dinner. Not like this.

He knows Louis is only trying to be polite, but he sees the pensive shift in Molly’s eyes as she sets her spoon down in her bowl with a delicate clatter.

“Oh, I don’t know…” she starts. Already, she’s retreating inwards. “I’m such a way from everybody. I’m a fuss.”

“What if you stayed the night?” Louis suggests. “Harry and I can come down and watch the farm in the morning. He’s taught me well.”

Harry throws him a look askance. He would kick him under the table if it weren’t for Molly’s company.

Louis says nothing else. The realisation that he may have crossed some kind of line starts to drift over his features. But then Molly sighs, and tucks her grey hair behind her ears, glancing between them.

“It would make you both happy?” she asks. Harry finally takes that moment to butt in.

“What matters is that _you’re_ happy,” he says. “That’s what I care about, Mol. If you don’t feel comfortable, or if you’re unsure, then that’s absolutely fine. Completely, one-hundred percent okay.”

She hasn’t left the farm, or been into Bourke, since Pat died. Harry does her grocery shopping and sees her every day. And of course, he wants her to branch out again, and see those who love her. But he knows how he was, when he was thrown back into things again. It’s jolting.

“I suppose, I…” Molly rolls her eyes to the ceiling in contemplation. “I should go, shouldn’t I? For Ev? Maybe it’s time I get out of the house.”

“You can do it for yourself, too,” Harry says. “Seeing you would make her so happy. And I think it’d give you a bit of happiness as well. ”

Dinner ends soon after that. Harry does the washing up. Louis goes back to his computer while Molly settles into the space Harry left. The telly plays quietly under the rush of water. Harry soaks the pot first, all the cutlery, and pauses when he grabs their bowls. Two innocent little letters left there for him to see on the lip, pink porcelain pearled and faded under the slant of his shadow and the dull light from the living room.

_HI._

He finds himself, in a twist of absurdity, smiling. As he lets the water rush again, the smell of the same sweet soap he’s known since childhood drifting up, he thinks back to the later years, when he and Lij were so much older, then the bad times, the few months before it all crumbled between them like the eroding riverbeds.

Often Harry would find little messages left for him. Their goofy words from childhood were swapped out for suggestions and places, like _river_ or _truck_ or _bed_. On good days, he’d get something just like the two little letters that collapse under the weight of the water now, _hello, babe, sweet,_ and on the rare and lucky occasion, his own name. Those were words that Harry flushed at, that had him almost dropping bowls in his haste to fumble with the taps while Elijah watched on from the table with that electric, bitten down grin hidden behind folded hands.

Harry glances back over his shoulder timidly once he shuts the water off. Louis’ eyes are glued to his notebook, computer forgotten as he writes, all messy fringe and tawny shadows now that the dining lights are dim. Harry only allows himself a few minutes to wonder if Louis will glance up, if his lips will pull at the corners, if his eyes will turn from blue to hazel and his hair will twist all dark, the same way Molly’s used to be before she went white.

The moment never comes, though. Harry is met only with the scratch of pen to paper, the low murmur of the telly and the distant bark and flutter of the dogs running through the dusty beginnings of an early dusk.

By the time they hit the road the sky is lit up in embers, bulging sun too big for the horizon. In their peripheral vision and catching the edges of mirrors, it rolls towards them, ready to engulf and encase everything in its path in scalding amber.

Reluctantly, Harry stops them in town for fuel. The gage is too low for him to drive back to Molly’s in the morning comfortably. He pulls the truck in at the tiny service station and Louis hops out with Pippa following close behind. He’s got his hands in his pockets, eyes shaded as he faces the sun and walks out onto the empty road, the lingering dust from the firm wheels of the Hilux still misting the air.

The ghostliness of the town wraps around Harry quickly. Louth wouldn’t have more than fifty people living at it’s little heart, less than that spread across the rest of the land that makes up their slice of the shire, and with the old pub still closed and the general store shutters locked up tight, the phantom glow of the fuel prices and the fluorescent, barely there ebb of the fridges behind the dirty windows inside the station itself are something of a spectre. Time here bends and bows under the weight of the sun, stopping and starting only as it’s perceived by those who pass though, otherwise remaining totally still.

Inside, Harry spots Tom, the owner, watching them through the murky glass. He offers Harry a slow wave which Harry returns as he reaches for the pump. Through the window Tom is a ghost himself, dust deep-set in the wrinkles of his face, blurred completely by the glaze and inky world that reflects along the glass, the street imprinted in the patches of his red-raw skin.

“How’s your old man?” he asks gruffly, when he rings Harry up. He’s sunweathered and thin browed, a ring of silver hair all that’s left on his spotted, balding scalp. They have the same conversation each time Harry stops by, now, ever since that morning.

“He’s good,” Harry responds, taking his change. “How are you, Tom?”

Tom grunts, just as expected, and that’s that. Soon, he’ll lock up and leave, and he’d never admit it, but Harry knows that Tom waits up for him most nights. Once the Hilux sprawls through the mainroad, leaving a spray dust in its wake, the beaming lights of the service station always stutter out of existence. Time paused, until Harry returns in the morning.

He steps outside and squints. Louis has moved further down the road with Pippa staring up at him, then intermittently dawlding away to run her nose close to the ground when it seems she’s given up on trying to get his attention. Harry pockets his wallet and keys and strolls over.

“What’s that?” Louis asks softly, pointing.

Harry follows his finger.

As a boy, he struggled with understanding the concept of God. Sometimes, these vague, swimmy memories still come to him in sleep: Mum’s hands on his shirt, the one she used iron every Sunday morning until it was stiff to the touch. She left the old iron pressed down on it so long one day that it left yellow streaks along the chest. The sweat pearled along his neck as they sat in old pews of their tiny corrugated church, Dad waiting outside with the truck running idle, muttering under his breath about this and that and the farm and the cattle and the cotton while Mum took Harry in for the morning service. He sat with his knees tucked together and his posture straight and listened for as long as he could before his mind would wander, easily distracted.

Though he struggles to remember most things, he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the day she left for good, the dust plumes on the road and Dad slamming drawers and doors and walls and swearing the place down, and all the while, Harry watched from the end of the dining room table with his hands clenched tight in his lap, eyes closed while he prayed for God to make the day start all over again, because if Harry knew that would be the outcome of the mornings breakfast, maybe he could convince her to stay, or distract them both with rambling. It was the first time he prayed with his heart, and it was the first time he felt guilty about asking so much.

And then he came to the cross the following Sunday evening, when Dad agreed to drop him at the church with a look of complete bewilderment on his face, but he obliged, and crossed the street to talk to Tom at the service station. Harry swiveled away from the church and walked up the slight hill to the cross, the setting sun hitting it dead on and shining the whole town and sky in glossed light, and there, sitting at the rusted iron fence, eight years old with God in his chest, understanding nothing and everything all at once, he prayed again to go back in time.

“A headstone,” Harry answers, finally, the only simplified way he can explain what Louis is gazing after.

In the distance, it glows so warmly that the shape of the Celtic Cross is blurred into a halo of white-hot light. This is one of the first times they’ve passed through Louth at this exact time of night, during the true breath of sunset, and Louis is wide-eyed with wonder as he walks towards the hill, drawn like he’s been possessed to touch. Harry follows wordlessly.

The graveyard is tiny, surrounded by red dirt and dead shrub, near non-existent tombstones crumbling and faded away, protected only by a waist high wrought-iron fence that’s gone dark with rust in it’s age. But piercing upwards from the centre of this fading collection stands a seven metre granite monument, seemingly untouched, like each night the kiss of the sun breathes life back into it’s pillar like a kiss from God, the only part of this empty town that triumphs over the stop-start of time that halts the rest. Harry crosses his arms over his chest and stares up at it.

“It’s beautiful,” Louis says, slipping off his hat so it hangs along his back. “I can’t believe I never noticed it. Who’s it for?”

“Mary Matthews,” Harry says. “She was the wife of the settler that took Louth from the Wongaibon people, the true owners of this land. There’s some long-winded story about how he left her for the goldfields here and built the pub as a halfway point on the river run. Mary followed him from England. The light hits the monument during every sunset and it’s built so that on the anniversary of her death, it reflects from the cross and shines on the exact house they shared. Right on the doorstep.”

Louis hums under his breath and continues to stare.Harry does too, just not where he should be. He can’t help but become caught. The luminosity bathes them both, and against the red dirt Louis’ skin is tan and raw, freckles flared up on his nose and cheeks, darkening as the sky does.

There are so many things running through Harry’s mind right now, so many memories and thoughts that he avoids ever touching, those thoughts the very reason he avoids coming here unless the sky is black and there’s only stillness.

“Look,” Louis says, squinted eyes softening. “You can see the sun going down.”

The bright illumination of the cross is eclipsed in umbra, fading and drawing down the granite like water through tree roots, a slow drip of honey-sap that hopes to reach the ground before it evaporates completely. They watch it lower in silence, until the old cross becomes grey and worn again and the sky is heavy.

Like the flicking of a switch the breathless tension in Harry’s chest starts to dissipate. Phantom hands around his shoulder unclenching and finally releasing him.

He turns away. “Let’s get out of here.”

He doesn’t want to think of Mum right now, of anyone. Not after tonight. After alphabet soup and the hallway light and the long, unexpected sleep that felt like being a boy all over again.

Louis follows, wordless as they kick up dust, Pippa leading the way to the truck.

-

Molly’s face is glazed with sweat, but Harry doesn’t comment. Just drives. One hand on the wheel.

Squished down by Louis’ feet, Pippa is completely unimpressed. Her demotion to the floor has left her panting and impatient. The culmination of her hot breath filling the air and Molly squeezing hard enough at Harry’s free hand to crush his knuckles does absolutely no favors for the aura of calmness he’s trying to project out into the cramped truck as they rattle down Bourke’s main street.

It’s still early. They’re all having dinner together before filtering down to the pub for the night’s celebrations, but he can tell Molly is more nervous about this one-on-one time than being able to fade into the background of a crowded room.

Harry doesn’t even get a chance to give her a reassuring smile as he parks the truck around the back of the pub. Ev is already waiting for them, face lit up with pure joy. She comes springing to the passenger side and Louis slips out quickly, so Ev can reach in and grab for Molly’s hands herself. They almost stumble and fall down into the dirt, Pippa coming with them, barking at their giggled laughter.

“Oh, God!” Ev says, booming and bright and still laughing as she lifts Molly, far taller than her, into a squishy hug. “It’s so, _so_ good to see you!”

Harry watches from the drivers side as they talk, all quick and frantic, Ev’s eyes gone shiny with happy tears, and when Molly shifts, Harry can see that hers are much the same. The nervous, ashen glaze that had settled over her face begins to blur around the edges.

“Harry, get your arse out here!” Ev calls over Molly’s shoulder, pulling her towards the pub. “You’re in charge of dinner.”

“I was going to say Happy Birthday, but nevermind!” Harry shouts back, ducking to watch them go, Ev’s arm around Molly’s waist, guiding her up upstairs. 

A fond smile pulls at his cheeks.

Louis pokes his head into the truck with a similar look. “I think she’s gonna be okay.”

“I think so, too,” Harry says.

“C’mon. You heard her.” Louis jabs his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m starving.”

Dinner is everything Harry wants it to be. Molly always has this relaxed and gentle way about her, but here especially, surrounded by friends so close that family is a better used term, able to do something other than talk about bills and molasses and pellets, she shines.

Harry washes the dishes and Louis dries whilst Molly, Ned and Ev open a bottle of red wine between them to begin the night. Harry gives Ev a new puzzle book, a pack of her favourite liquorice bullets, and hand drawn card. It’s a deliberate replica of the way he used to draw in kinder, people with potatoes for hands and three thin strands of hair. It has her in stitches of laughter, then in poorly disguised tears as she reads what he’s written there for her. The embrace she wraps him up in is firm and squeezing. Ned pries her away jokingly, only to wipe under her eyes for her not a moment later.

After Ev has declared a toast to them all, and of course, being two red wines down, to herself, Harry notices Molly drift down the hall. She leaves her half-empty glass on the table. There are plans to go downstairs now, Ev bubbling with joy and Pippa trailing down with Ned and Louis, but Harry keeps his eyes to the hallway and waits, assuring Ev he’ll be right there.

Once the little room is silent, he scoops up the wine glass with careful hands and treads to the bathroom.

The sound of running water trickles from behind the door, a thin strip of light escaping out onto the old floorboards.

“Mol?” Harry calls, paired with a barely there knock of knuckles.

The water cuts off immediately.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Molly calls back. A rummage of bottles, a sniffle.

In the shadow of the hall, her glass in his hand, Harry listens to her shaky breathing.

A few minutes later he turns the doorknob hesitantly. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Molly’s are all shiny. She sniffles and looks down into the sink. All the pearly light is reflecting here, touches the top of her silver hair like a halo, her elbows dusted white, this dewiness kept captive in the corners of the mirror and the dips of the old sink and the rusted feet of the clawfoot bath.

“I’ll be just a second, lovie,” Molly says, voice wobbly. “You go down and have a drink. I’ll be right there.”

“Mol…”

She sniffles again. A balled up tissue is clasped tight in her fist, stained with the same black that faintly rings her under eyes. The guilt is akin to swallowing river water, falling down from a ski and being consumed by brown, only the ropes are tangled around Harry’s feet and he’s still being pulled along, burns around his ankles.

“I just wish Pat were here,” Molly says. Helpless, she brings the crumpled tissue to her eye to catch a tear. “That’s all. Just a silly wish.”

Harry puts the wine glass down on the vanity and reaches for her elbow. “It’s not silly at all.”

“Oh, it is,” she huffs, misty gaze on her now wrung hands. Harry swivels her to face him.

“Mol, look at me,” he says, hands up under her jaw, the skin there somehow so smooth despite the sun-weathered wrinkles, the lines of laughter around her mouth, under her eyes when he turns the tap back on and wets the tips of his fingers, brushing them feather-light against the smudged makeup by her waterline. “He’s still here. He’s with us, okay?”

Molly’s mouth crumples.

“Okay?” Harry repeats. He squeezes her shoulder and pulls her in tight to his chest.

“Okay,” she whispers back, frail and thin in the cage of Harry’s arms. “Thank you, Harry.”

He blinks away the heat in his eyes. He can’t let her see, and when she pulls back from him he’s schooled his features. He offers her a warm, encouraging smile and pushes the unfinished wine into her hands. Downstairs, there’s a round of muffled cheers, the distant sound of drums and guitars and doors opening and closing, the mechanical kitchen hum vibrating up through the floor.

Molly wipes at the corner of her eye and takes in a breath.

“I’m okay,” she says firmly. “Let’s go, lovie.”

-

Nights of celebration can be tethered to childhood in the strangest ways.

It should be impossible, with all the faces he used to know aged and shaped by the sun, the people he grew up with just like him, taller, drinks in their hands, tattoos and scars and sunburns. Harry didn’t come to the pub as a boy and shoot whiskey or get drunk on pints and schooners and duck outside to smoke.

But then he slips out through the kitchen and he sees the snippets of newspapers all pinned up and the hole in the wall and that stupid scarf hanging, steps out into the room where the jukebox is playing, line after line resonating in his chest, _he’s a steel town disciple_ and _the last plane out of Sydney’s almost gone_ and _I’ll shout it to the blue summer sky_ , all of it tied together with a little piece of string, a complex dot-to-dot emerging out of each guitar riff and voice and rhythm, images of a different time, murky memories that suddenly seem like only yesterday.

The nights back when the Ev and Ned were still in Louth, the banged up karaoke Harry sung with his parents, Paul Kelly with Dad, Divinyls with Mum, and then later, dancing with his feet on top of Ned’s boots, being swung too and fro with his head thrown back in absurd laughter, the same songs playing throughout the years but never getting old, somehow eternal in their joy, in the way the whole pub links arms and sings drunkenly along to _You’re the Voice_ and _The Horses_ and _Beds are Burning_ , like now, Harry dazed with Ned’s arm squeezed around his neck as they belt out the words, Ev clinging tight to Molly across the room.

Harry isn’t supposed to be drinking. Harry is supposed to be driving them back home later tonight. But then he’d spotted Tom, or Tom had spotted him, more like. And to Harry’s surprise, he offered to take them home if Harry wanted to have fun, bony hand squeezing Harry’s arm with a rueful smile. Maybe he’s had enough of watching over Harry from the outside, or maybe he’s just decided to do something other than grunt his replies Harry’s way each time they have a conversation.

But then there’d been a schooner in Harry’s hands, and Tom wandered off after tapping Harry’s wrist. _No later than twelve, kid. You’re not too old for a curfew yet._

And now here Harry stands, or slumps, rather, tucked against Ned’s sweaty side with his veins full up of golden ale and an unadvisable concoction of craft beer and unnamed shots. Shots. He should get another drink.

At the bar, he spots Louis for the first time in the better part of an hour, engaged in conversation with Jai.

Harry interrupts with far less grace than originally intended, almost tripping over himself and two others by the time he reaches them.

“Uh-oh,” Jai says.

“I’d like another,” Harry declares.

Louis looks at him with raised brows.

“Steady on,” he says, mouth tilted. “It’s early days, yet.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Harry sniffs, looking to Jai, who’s managed to drift away across the bar to serve somebody else. Harry frowns. “Well, now look. You’ve ruined my opportunity for another shit beer.”

“Boo-hoo.”

Harry rolls his eyes and squeezes himself into one of the empty stools. “Where’ve you been, anyway?”

“Now who’s nosy?” Louis says, but the offended expression Harry can feel taking over his face melts when he looks at Louis’ own. A smirk hidden by the rim of his glass, complete mischief. “I’ve been right here, mate. Before that I was dancing with Ev. Then I saw your attempts and thought I better clear out before I end up with a concussion.”

“ _Heeey._ ”

“Y’know those giant inflatable waving things you see out the front of shops? That’s you, but more dangerous, because you’re not made of plastic and air.” Louis takes a long swig of his beer, mostly to hide his teasing smile. “Well…not that I can tell, anyway.”

“I’m _extremely_ offended right now.”

Louis throws his head back in laughter, Harry’s own much quieter, bubbling out of his chest. He crosses his forearms on the bartop and drops his forehead against them, laughter turning to a groan.

“Don’t worry,” Louis consoles. “I’m sure with a little practice, you’ll be all aces.”

Harrysquints up at him blearily.

There’s a sheen of rosy blush on his cheeks. From the drinking and the warmth, Harry guesses. Sweaty hair by his ears and three-day stubble against his tan. Louis takes another sip of his beer, mouth still quirked. Harry’s heart starts to flutter.

“Why don’t we get another drink into you, hm?” Louis says. “You think that’ll help?”

“I think I’m beyond help,” Harry says dully.

Louis calls Jai over amongst his laughter to get them another round of drinks.

“On the tab?” Jai asks, unimpressed and clearly eager to switch out from behind the bar and have a few beers of his own.

“I’ll get it now,” Louis says, fumbling for his wallet. There are pictures inside that Harry can’t quite make out, a few girls, Louis with another man, both of them smiling.

“What tab?” Harry asks, half-slurred and still folded over the bar.

“Just for tonight,” Louis says. “My drinks, your drinks, Ev and Ned and Molly.”

Harry sits up with an accompanying headrush. “You—. Louis. I can’t let you do that.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Louis waves him off. “It’s the least I could do.”

“But…”

Their beers are set down and Louis reaches for his, staring at Harry inquisitively from over the lip of his glass, like he’s waiting for Harry to continue. Waiting for the argument. Normally, Harry would be ready to retaliate. That flush of frustration is stirring in the pit of his stomach, that growling pride bubbling under the surface.

But it doesn’t grow beyond his own body. There’s something else beating it down, subduing it, until it’s only a weak and unobtainable pulse. Harry bites at the inside of his cheek.

“Thank you. That means a lot.”

“No worries.” Louis shrugs a shoulder and pushes away from the bar, stool scraping. “While you’re here, I better get back to the dance floor. The Angels are calling my name and this might be my only window of opportunity.”

And then he’s gone, weaving back towards the huddle of people dancing together, glass raised in the air. Ev spots him and immediately brings him in.

Harry stares, unmoving, his drink surely going warm the longer he lets it sit. It seems everyone has reached that deliciously rich stage of drunkenness, the peak before the nosedive that’s sure to follow in a few hours time, all gold-veins and invincibility as the song plays— _am I ever gonna see your face again?—_ and the resounding chant— _no way, get fucked, fuck off!—_ rings out through the room.

Tilda finds him later, when the nosedive is closer, the crash and burn, the go-too-fast around the hill momentum that sends cars flying down into shrubs. Harry’s walking back to the bar after dancing again, sweaty temples and flushed cheeks, needing another drink. Water, this time, would be a good idea. 

Tilda catches him with a drunken smile before he gets there, palms to his chest.

“Hello, stranger,” she says. All pearly teeth and jewelry and coquettish smile.

“Tils,” Harry greets. She’s done up, curled hair and feathery lashes and pink along her cheeks, patterned skirt and beaded bracelets and lips bright with gloss.

She pokes Harry’s hips, gets him swaying. “Cool moves out there.”

“You don’t have to play nice with me,” Harry says. Delight sparks in Tilda’s eyes. She hooks her fingers into the bottom of his shirt.

“I know,” she says easily. “Are you leaving soon?”

“I’m not sure…” He doesn’t mean to search for an escape, and he certainly doesn’t expect to find one. That is, until he meets Louis’ eye over Tilda’s shoulder. Louis, sitting at the end of the bar, watching Harry intently. He has a fresh beer, which he takes a swig of, and turns his attention back to whatever Jai is telling him. “Um.”

Tilda comes closer, up on her tiptoes so she can whisper in his ear. “My car’s parked out back…”

Louis glances over again. Takes another sip of his beer. Harry swallows thickly.

“Is it?”

“It is. Or we could walk to my place,” Tilda continues, lips brushing this giddy secret against Harry’s neck. “Nobody’s home right now.”

“It’s Ev’s birthday, Tils,” Harry says. He puts a hand on her hip to steady her. “I shouldn’t.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Tilda hums. She laughs and squeezes his sides. “Later?”

Harry catches Louis’ eye as his thumbs slip at the skin along Tilda’s back. Blood rushes to his face. He’s lightheaded. He’s had way too much to drink. Louis isn’t looking away.

“Maybe later,” Harry says, managing to bring his eyes back to Tilda’s.

“Cool.” She shrugs, bounces up onto the balls of her feet, and pulls him down into a kiss with her hands cupping his neck.

Harry kisses her back.

It’s not much later that Tom comes to collect him from where he’s motionless at the bar, arms folded over, staring at the woodgrain. He hasn’t really moved. His brain is whirring uncontrollably fast.

_Her parents are here. What if they saw? Ev? It’s all been leading up to this, hasn’t it. And now you’ve really done it, kid._

Louis wasn’t there when Tilda drifted away. Just an empty chair and an empty glass and Harry’s heart rabbiting against his ribcage.

Tom leads him outside after a long farewell from Ev and Ned, bone-crushing hugs and promises for him to call them in the morning to let them know he’s alright. Molly expresses much the same sentiment, though her touch is light, petting his hair back from his surely sweaty face.

“Look after yourself,” she says. “Go easy in the morning, and don’t drive before you’ve eaten and had some water and let yourself rest.”

By Tom’s truck, Louis is already waiting with Pippa by his side, scratching under her jaw and behind her ears playfully while she bites back at his hands. Once she spots Harry she rushes over with a bundled excitement that he’s almost too drunk to handle, but he manages to bend down to her without toppling onto his arse.

Tom herds them into the truck and gives Pippa the front seat because _you two are a couple of pissed idiots,_ and in the back, Harry’s legs cramp up from how little room there is. The world past the window is both stagnant and rushing. He stares out into the nothingness while the aircon blasts a wispy chill against the crown of his head.

Beside him, Louis hums along to the radio and drums his palms on the seats.

It’s all silver back home, clear night letting the moon through, dead fields just missing the craters to form a moon all it’s own. Even in this glow and with Tom guiding him, Harry forgets to skip the first step and stumbles onto the veranda. Sweat beads at his lips and his underarms and along the small of his back.

Tom instructs Louis to lock the door. The headlights of his truck flash and flutter through the curtains in the living room as he drives away.

Harry manages to navigate to his bedroom, lousy limbs banging into furniture as he goes. He can hear Louis laughing behind him.

The radio is still going, just the way Harry left it. He turns it up, cranks it a little because there’s music on and the song is familiar. He fumbles with his belt. The buckle hits the ground with an abrupt _clank._

“Turn that thing off, will you?” Louis’ voice echoes through from the living room, but it’s put on, all grouchy, and for some reason it’s one of the funniest things Harry’s ever heard.

He is odd and light and airy and sloshed in a way he hasn’t been for so long, dazed and smiley as he kicks his jeans off clumsily and hangs his head out the door.

“But it’s James _Reyne._ ”

“It’s _late_ , is what it is,” Louis says.

In the kept-in heat of the living room he’s just a shadow. Harry watches as he slips off his shirt. Or attempts too, at least. His arms get stuck with the fabric tight around his shoulders. He looks like a sad tree, hands hanging limp, attempting to tug it off with feeble, uncooperative fingers.

“Now look what you’ve done, Styles,” Louis complains. His voice is muffled. “I’m a twisted mess.”

“What _I’ve_ done!”

“Yes, you!”

Harry hangs onto the door as he laughs, lest he keel over in tipsy amusement. Louis stumbles and whacks his thigh on the television cabinet. Harry laughs harder, these big cackles mixed with Louis’ colourful outpour of swearing.

“Jesus, come here,” Harry says. Then, teasingly, very drunk, “Listen to the sound of my voice.”

“There’s nothing I want less.”

“ _Heeey._ ”

Louis manages to hobble over eventually, stopping in the doorway of Harry’s room, both of them attempting to muffle their laughter. Harry hooks his fingers into the worn shirt. Hands brushing light over Louis’ sides, he pries it up and away from Louis’ face first, then helps him bring it down over his arms.

Louis’ hair has gone fluffy from the static. A wild nest. With a dopey smile, Harry smushes it down with his palm.

“Great,” Louis says flatly. “Thanks for that.”

“You’re absolutely welcome,” Harry says.

Another pitter-patter of laughter, softer now, just a breath as they blink at each other in the dark.

Neither of them shift away.

Their smiles are starting to fade. Louis is watching him back, and Harry’s fingers curl up at it. So do Louis’ own. Their knuckles brush where they’re still bunched up together in the shirt.

A tether.

Weeks ago, when Harry handed those towels over, it was to keep them apart. They never touched. Never held on this long. Never stood in the dark like this, watching, while the radio echoes behind them like it’s coming from the other end of a distant tunnel.

_Don’t be so reckless…_

Harry should pull back. It’s time to sleep, to rest weary eyes and close the door and breathe past these intense flushes of prickly heat. Turn the radio down and let it whisper. Close the curtains, push his face into the pillows, and hope for nothing but an inky darkness as he sleeps.

No dreams. No nightmares. Nothing in between.

Louis’ chest shudders with a breath. Harry’s lips part.

They collide.

Hands moving, grappling, that first painful knock of teeth. Between them the shirt falls and tangles in their feet. Through the dark they trip and stumble and careen into the desk, Harry’s back hitting the edge and then slipping up as Louis grabs, lifts, pushes.

In their rough and rattling haste something tumbles from a shelf and hits the floor. A book, a picture-frame, Harry doesn’t know. Nor does he care. He’s distracted completely by Louis’ frantic fingers curling up in his shirt, then spreading over the now exposed, flushed skin of his back. The harsh, denim-rough pressure of Louis’ jeans on Harry’s bare legs sparks static against the downy hair there, a supernal frisson that scintillates through him in the dark and gathers in a starry mass at the pit of his stomach.

Their panting mouths, unwilling to part. Harry, unwilling to let go, with his palms holding Louis’ jaw fiercely, just as Louis grapples at him.

Soon, though, he wants more, and gets his hands between them, fumbling to undo Louis’ belt. In turn Louis’ fervent touch travels to match Harry’s own, over his hips and firm on Harry’s thighs, thumbs digging in to the muscle there, the pressure so close but so far from where Harry wants him that it’s absolutely maddening. The mind-bending spectrum of _too-much-not-enough_ has him gasping into Louis’ mouth, pushing roughly at his jeans to get to his skin, uncaring of his own intoxicated eagerness. Not a moment later, Harry’s shirt is ripped up over his head and tossed out into the room.

Louis kisses him so fiercely once it’s out of the way that his body bows with it, sweat slipping down his temples, pooling in collarbones. His mouth tastes like sweetness and city living and the slow-tainted heat of this town all combined, and Harry refuses to let go even as they go stumbling together again.

The bed creaks under their weight, Harry first, Louis following heavily into his lap once he’s kicked off his jeans, kisses never ceasing. To have the heat of bare skin this close is intoxicating, to smell cologne, to haul Louis closer by his thighs and keen at the rough tug of fingers in his curls, pulling his head back so their mouths melt together in a dizzy rush, messy and dirty in the only way it can be. Harry’s losing it, he’s sure, losing sight of which way is up and which way is down and where to put his hands next. Each part of Louis he touches is a shame to leave, but to leave any part untouched seems even more of a loss.

Louis bites Harry’s bottom lip and tugs at his underwear, that sentiment not lost on him either.

It’s rough. Nails and teeth and greedy hands. Louis pushes and Harry pushes back, neither one of them letting the other breathe, neither willing to give up control. Turmoil presents itself in the most brilliant and burning of ways sometimes and this is one of them; Harry’s eyes clenched shut, his mouth bruised and buzzing, another body moving against him, alongside him, drenched heavily in sweat and moonlight and keenness.

He wants so much it terrifies him sometimes, and that want is always kept locked away. Now, want breaks free like a hungry beast. Want becomes need when it’s starved so long.

And then Louis’ hands spread on Harry’s chest and he puts a foot down to the floor to steady himself, and he pushes again, pushes hard, and a tether inside Harry finally snaps as his body lets go and his head hits the pillow, all the air rushing out of his lungs.

A pause.

In the dark, with Louis’ palms spread-eagle over Harry’s heaving chest, thumbs kissing over breastbone, all Harry can picture is Louis pressing down. The sinew of his forearms are stark even in shadow, strong, possible of shattering bone. It’s hard to tell if the pressure Harry already feels is real, or if it’s the imaginary result of being fragile beyond his control that’s adding all this weight.

Louis is moonshine, all dips and shadows, hair a mess, lips swollen and eyes hazy with arousal. A naked man, here, in Harry’s bed. Strange sun-tan lines and an angular jaw and fingers that could dig in and detach Harry’s ribs, dismantle his spine, create pinpricks and fractures and breaks, punctures to Harry’s lungs that would bleed him out right here on the sheets. Death warmed up in a whole new way come morning.

Hands can hurt, capable of killing and maiming and touching. Swift fists, unimaginable stings; God knows Harry’s been dealt his fair share, and dealt out his own in turn. And even in the arms of those who have tried to cradle him, belligerence is all he’s ever known.

Then Louis touches. Harry nearly bursts into tears.

_Soft hands. You have such soft hands. Nobody around here has hands like you._

Light fingers trace Harry’s collarbones, shoulders, arms with reverence. Louis shifts back between Harry’s legs through the heavy shadows, palms to his kneecaps, nails dragging sweet and sparkling along the underside of his calves, the pry of fingers on the inside of Harry’s thighs so careful, spreading them wide slowly, conjuring trick after trick, the perfect legerdemain.

Harry’s face burns, watching Louis’ lips part. The kisses he peppers on Harry’s inner thighs are so unwarrantedly intimate that it hurts just to witness, to feel the hot scrape of a mouth on such a silly, private place. _Only the sun has touched me there, yet here you are._

Louis presses his thumbs into the bruises along Harry’s hips, melts his mouth over them, trails kisses up his chest, folds their lips together again as they breathe, as Harry’s fingers curl at the delicate hair along Louis’ nape, the skin there burnt and scalding to the touch.

It shouldn’t be this slow. It shouldn’t be this intimate. He wonders what Louis is like back in the city, if this is how he touches everyone, if he’s done this before. What it would be like to always be so sure.

Elijah was always gentle in everything except this. So reckless and rough because it had to be a rush. It had to finish before it was over so nobody else could come along and end it all for them.

Harry’s hands shake. He doesn’t know what to do with all the things he wants to say, with all the ways he needs Louis to make this quick, to go back to franticness and that mind-sweeping craze of needing to touch.

He isn’t used to this kind of carefulness, this sensation that feels alarmingly like tenderness. He can’t get used to something he’s always thought so ephemeral.

Louis sucks his fingers into his mouth, goes so slow, brings them down, down, down.

It’s breathing hard and heavy into a fire blanket, panting into the wet heat and waiting for the flames to pass, all the while sitting on the edge of suffocation. That’s what Harry imagines, as Louis touches, explores, presses in, as Harry’s thighs shake and the skin of his hands become indented by the pressure of his own biting teeth: that moment right before suffocation, that dry-wet dust and smoke taste, the flash of the embers, of torrid sunlight catching the dirt, Harry’s chest arching up, up, up, fingers fisted white-knuckled in the sheets.

Louis is close, then, mouth a drowsy dream by Harry’s neck, up along his jaw, to his lips. Harry touches his face and tries to learn it as quickly as he can. This won’t be the same come morning, he knows it, and he’s suddenly struck with the need to know everything. _There’s your nose, your cheeks, your lashes. Your wet mouth. Your chin. You’re so cutting, don’t you know that? Don’t you know?_

Louis pulls back to search through the bedside drawer and Harry’s mouth floods with want as he attempts to follow him, that hollow, dusty space at the back of his throat gone soft-warm and molten with need.

In the dark, eyes shiny and wet-mouthed, Louis stares, both their chests heaving, slicked up with sweat and flush.

_Are we going to regret this?_

Harry stares back, beckons him closer before he can change his mind, and then Louis is there, he’s there-there- _there_ and Harry curls into him and thinks _yes._

Louis’ hands squeezing Harry’s thighs, the pressure of his fingers playing along Harry’s bruises and the sweet taste of Louis’ tongue dipping into his mouth. _Yes._ Harry’s knees knocking into Louis’ sides, ankles slipping, sweat on the sheets, moonlight pearled and dancing along the back of Louis’ shoulders. _Yes._ The room still and saturated with it, those heavy blues, the silver, all those dusty posters and homegrown trinkets watching on in silence as they breathe together. _Yes._

Harry looks up at the ceiling in a daze, hair slick against his face. Louis’ hands are all over him. Another body so close like this is almost too much to bear. But Harry will bear it. He’s good at that. He’ll grit his teeth and bite down.

He closes his eyes, clenches them shut and holds on as morning draws near.

_Yes. Yes. Yes._

The threat of sunlight is so close he can taste it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part one is dooooone. as always thanks for reading! your comments really keep me going so if you'd like to leave some i'd love to read them. i've made a [masterpost here](https://harrybridgers.tumblr.com/post/630330049980235777/all-is-now-harmed-by-fondleeds-its-still-that) if you feel like saying hi on tumblr :)
> 
> i'm off to handle the mammoth task of editing part two and writing part three all at once!
> 
> stay safe and be kind to one another ♡


	4. Chapter 4

_PART II: OPALS_

-

There was a time in Harry’s life when he was proud of his bumps and bruises. Little storms on his shins from tripping up the front steps or climbing gracelessly down from cotton pickers. Coin-sized hearts on his elbows caused by leaning on fences and out of windows. The odd thumb-shaped indent on his thigh or a brush-stroke along his calf. A splinter was something of a miracle, presenting his palms up to Pop with teary eyes from the sting of it, but hoping all the same for a pat on the shoulder, a sign of a job well done.

 _Rough hands,_ Pop used to say, ushering Harry outside early each morning, old notepad in the back pocket of his jeans always dotted with things to do. Fences to fix and soil to shift and cleaning to be done. _Rough hands, that’s what boys need. A worker's hands for a worker’s heart._

The Robertson’s farm became a haven, at first because those fields promised more than mundane work, and later because they promised Elijah’s company.Back then, Harry was still too young to operate the pickers and he hated fixing the fences, hated the internal soreness of his knees and back with not a bruise in sight to show for it. But the cattle were demanding. Even the little calves could be rough when they felt up to being boisterous.

Pat let Harry drive their paddock bombs and run the kelpies and work the paddocks. He cleared trees and filled trailers with debris and fodder and hay. He rode the quad bikes as fast as he was allowed to, and then a little faster than that if Pat wasn’t looking and he and Elijah could get away with a secret race, their fabricated wind whipping around their heads and carrying rare, ecstatic laughter.

Pop would watch on as Harry came back from the day, dust coated and exhausted and presenting his sore palms to be picked at, splinters sticking out from pink skin.

So he was proud to show them, even more so when these cuts and bumps and blisters finally callused over. He caught himself looking at Dad’s hands often, at the calluses on the tips of his fingers from playing his guitar and on the mount of his palms from the cattle and working on the machinery and handling rope. After these dinner-time assessments Harry would look back to his own hands, wondering and waiting for the moment he’d wake up and look the same.

Over dinner he told his stories of the day excitedly, Pop at the head of the table with the paper open, Dad across from Harry with his chin in his palm, faux-listening, nodding along as Harry counted each callus or attached a heroic journey to each new mark or rucked up his shirt to show off a new bruise blooming on his skinny torso, each story more fantastical, and often in his childish wonder, fabricated, than the last.

It was only when he found himself alone, sitting on his bed with the soles of his feet brushing the worn floor, that the pride he instilled so easily at the table trickled away. Because alone there was no distraction, no story to tell, no triumphant narrative he could conjure up. He had scars on his hands. These fleshy little slips of pink and dead-white that were shined over with betadine, foul-smelling and achy, seeping into his skin, the sting so bad sometimes that his eyes prickled and he had to duck his head so Pop wouldn’t see. Some hero that made him.

He was sad, then silly in his sadness, because sad _was_ such a silly, tiny word for a feeling far bigger. He didn’t know how to put a name on it yet. He still doesn’t.

_Boys need rough hands. Boys need strong hands. Boys need—_

He was their nuclear baby, in a way, one of those kids born out of the boom of activism and protest and that creepy-crawly unspoken terror that underlined every headline on the news, the Oils demanding change and Peter Garrett trying for the senate and teenagers barely turned adults running away from home to slip from the cities and join strike groups, heading for outback dreams and dugouts in the chance the nuclear arms race became more.

Little groups of them used to come through Bourke all the time with their shitty cars and their wild hair and the aura of the bigger cities and the suburbs, pressing the townsfolk left, pressing them out of Bob Hawke’s grasp and onto their side.

That’s how Harry’s parents met. That’s what he’s been told. Mum came to push her politics and escape the city. She likely never expected lust or romance. She definitely never planned on getting married.

And out in a distant land where everything is dead, she never anticipated new life to spring from such vast nothingness.

It took a long time before Harry even considered that maybe there were other reasons beyond the way he was brought up, both when Mum was around and after she left. Pop so stern, clipping him around the ears and watching him do his homework and his reading and turning off the television every night when the news came on.

Sometimes, when Harry went to Ned and Evs, Pop would be the one to pick him up. Ev never liked him. She always had this glazed, unimpressed look on her face each time he came thundering up the stairs late at night to collect Harry from the kitchen table or the couch, where often he’d be absorbed in drawing or playing Solitaire or, on the rare occasion in the hope he wouldn’t be caught, watching the telly because Ev let him.

_Has he been watching that bloody telly all day?_

_Of course not._

He had, but Ev winked at him, their special code, and Harry gladly kept their little secret with glee.

Pop would grumble and gripe and grab Harry by the back of his collar, drawings of disproportionate cows and beaches with pink sand and wonky figures in a field left half-done on the table as they thumped down the stairs without even saying goodbye. If Dad came along he watched from the hall, arms crossed lightly over his chest, and Harry looked back at him and wondered where he went wrong, soon to become a running theme in his life.

Their nuclear boy. A born incendiary. And they couldn’t risk him breaking out of his bonds and blowing things apart.

Pop developed a hacking cough as rainfall became scarce and then non-existent. The dust storms from the early years filtered the entire house with red and grey clouds. Sheets to be washed every two days if they could manage the water usage and the cupboards in the kitchen to be cleaned out and emptied and put back together. Harry doesn’t know if he’ll ever forget the day he accidentally left the window in the bathroom open, nor the sting of his ear when Pop whacked him around the side of the head for it and thrust a dustpan and broom into his hands.

And then came the cough.

At night, tucked into the couch and into himself, Harry often flinched like he was dodging bullets each time Pop spluttered from the table where he was still reading the paper, the sound sharp and wet. Harry peeked over the armrest every now and then to watch him. If he was caught being distracted from his homework there’d be trouble, but each time Pop coughed, he couldn’t help but look.

The distant light from the kitchen dried the old man’s face all jaundiced and flakey, like the papier-mâché balloon heads they made in class, the one Harry jumped as high as he could just to stomp on with satisfaction.

Dad is hardly present in these tenuous memories. He comes only in splices, through chords and little riffs heard through the fly-screen door, never visible but always heard, humming and singing under his breath while Harry strained to catch and keep even a piece of him, so that Dad might have been interested in catching onto Harry, too. The melodies are lost now and were often lost fast, lasting only a night, ten minutes, until the next song. Harry was never brave enough to sing along. Not with Pop sitting in the next room, making sure Harry’s homework was done and he’d read his books and he was thinking about school and the farm and what was next on his list.

_Need. Need. What do boys need?_

Elijah always had this sweetness that melted Harry’s heart before he ever understood the true meaning of his fascinations.

They practically grew up together, the only two kids around the same age in Louth, Elijah having a year on Harry. But it wasn’t until Mum left that Harry became completely fixated on the other people in his life, on pleasing them and making sure they liked him. Making sure they laughed at his jokes, and were awed by his bruises and his scrapes and all his hard work, doting over his hands, sure to check up on him again.

And then there was Elijah, who Harry always wanted to impress most. Pat’s son, a cattle boy who showed Harry how to lead them and move them and run the kelpies, and who never made Harry feel small.

Elijah became the kind of boy Harry would take a bullet for. And he did as they grew together, starting first with their silly target practice, rusty old _Schweppes Lemonade_ cans pinging off their poorly balanced places along the fenceposts. The sound of it always made Elijah flinch, but Harry would hold that tiny rifle steady and knock the cans from their posts, _one-two-three-four_ in a row, looking back in the hope that Elijah had seen, that he was smiling, and proud. And he always was.

Then it was the cattle, and quickly the satisfaction left them. Elijah cried into Pat’s stomach because he didn’t like this part, he didn’t like them dead in the dirt, and Pop had his hand on Harry’s shoulder and he knew he had to take the bullet for both of them, and he couldn’t disappoint Pop, or Elijah, or Dad, who stood by the truck with his face glazed white, just off the cusp of an argument with Pop on who should stay, who should shoot, the 0.22 ending up in Harry’s small, scarred fingers.

Later, in Elijah’s room with the door kicked closed while the dead cattle were dealt with, the heat pouring through the windows so hot it hurt to breathe, Elijah gripped Harry’s hand in his. _I’m sorry, Harry, I’m sorry._ He held on tight and refused to let go. All doe-hazel eyes and his malleable heart. Harry looked at their clasped hands.

 _Rough, just like me,_ he thought, staring down at all the places their dirty fingers crossed. _I need you. I think I need you._

The older he became, the more harsh he felt. Even now he wonders if Pop’s plan all along was to create a little monster, if he knew what he was doing with each curse and rule and smack. His steely, stoic nuclear boy. If he knew it so well because Harry saw himself, terrifyingly, in Pop’s eyes sometimes, and in Dad’s. It would happen at random, washing his hands and looking up into the mirror and for a split second seeing that same dull fear that washed over Dad’s face out in the field that day, his hands brushing awkwardly down Harry’s dust stained back as he threw up against a dead mulga tree.

And then there was Elijah, who was always the one to take Harry out of that place, who gave Harry new perspectives, who had shelves of books that they read together and _Lego_ on the floor that Harry stood on, the wide bay window that caught the morning rays and a big bed and a warm chest and who snorted when he laughed, pearly-eyed as Harry watched, rapt, unsure of what to do with how his heart clenched up the way it did every time they were together.

Harry wasn’t like an echo of Dad or Pop when Elijah was around. He didn’t care about his bumps and bruises because Elijah didn’t flaunt his own. He cared about reading fantasy books and learning to make scrambled eggs and collecting little fossils and bones and the last of the dead leaves from the fields, challenging each other to do the perfect cartwheel and racing laps around the paddocks until they collapsed on top of each other in a giggling heap, watching the _Lifestyle_ channel after school and laughing until they cried as they tried to copy the different British accents they heard.

He ached for Mum to come home when he allowed himself to think about it, and loved Pat and Molly and their alphabet soup. The farmhouse became a home and each time he left for the empty fields he exhausted himself turning back to stone.

It only seemed fitting that Pop would be the one to figure it all out.

The fields were halfway to dead by then, cotton pickers left out to gather dust like giant mechanical monsters with cobwebs interlaced and strung gold between their spindles. Every few weeks another dust storm would pass through, the sudden wind wiping out and battering any chance of rainfall away, the seasons blurring and the Darling shrivelling up, and that day by the river that’s seared into Harry’s memory forever, fifteen-nearly-sixteen and on the cusp of young love.

In love. With another boy.

They spent hours and hours by the Darling that summer. Neither of them had their license yet but they could both drive stick by the time they were hitting their teens. The commandeered the paddock bombs whenever they could, especially after their first kiss months earlier, an unsteady admission in the bright blue of midnight cartoon light, tasting like Milo and vanilla ice-cream, trembling to touch each other’s faces. 

A blistering noon, the Oils blaring on the radio because they were both still reeling that Peter Garrett had decided to leave the band, and they sat on the dry bank with the dry grass tickling beneath their knees, the last few puddles of water nothing but a flush of dark dirt amongst the pale, cracked cavern that made up the rest of the bed. Elijah always managed to pluck Harry out of reality, which became the bane of all their problems but also the reason they still kept coming back to each other despite everything; it’s why they were so wrapped up in kisses and light touches to an elbow and a jaw and a brow, surrounded by the low hum of bugs and the radio murmuring _take this heart, break this heart,_ unable to pull away long enough to register the crunch of tires, the deadly click of an ignition turning off, or the muted press of footsteps in the dust.

Elijah brushed a curl from Harry’s forehead and Harry wanted to melt. He loved this person and knew it without question, because every other love in his life was something he constantly questioned. Elijah didn’t spark that painful curiosity. Not yet.

“ _Boys!_ ”

The bomb finally dropped.

They sprang apart. Shoved each other away. Harry’s face, burning hot from the sun and Elijah’s attention, was swept suddenly in an avalanche so icy it locked his entire body up, frozen and stuck beneath thick snow.

And there was Pop, staring down at them both with sweat beading along his red, furious face

The ride home was torturous. Harry remembers it well despite his desperate attempts to forget. His face was completely wet with silent tears, the noon light piercing through the windows in a way that intended to sear in the hurt. He sniffled continuously and dug his fingers into his thighs so he wouldn’t wail. He was so sure he would be sick but he didn’t dare open his mouth, kept his teeth clenched and almost bowed over with how fiercely his stomach twisted itself up, how badly he wanted to open the door and run all the way back to the river, take their shitty car and escape this place. He wanted to see Elijah and make sure that everything would be okay, because it had to be. It had to be.

“Please don’t tell Dad,” Harry whispered miserably.

Pop shook his head once, firmly. “You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.”

Harry hid his face in his arms, knees up, feet on the seat.

_I am._

He couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen once they got home, if Pop would call Pat and tell him what he saw, if he’d smack Harry or make Dad do it instead, each thought another squeeze around Harry’s throat, his fingers aching from how tightly he held himself.

What if they sent Elijah away? What if they were never allowed to see each other again? What if—

They pulled up at the house. Pop kicked open his door and slammed it closed, and Harry, too paralysed with fear to move, remained where he was with shaking bones. Dad was still at the Robertson's, his truck gone from the side of the house. Harry wished he was there, wished he could bury his face in his chest and breathe him in like he did when he was just a kid, before everything got so messed up, before he’d have to come up with these naive and fruitless imaginary scenarios in which Dad would comfort him like he loved his son.

Pop wrenched the passenger side door of the truck open.

“Go to your room. _Now._ ”

Harry ran inside.

On the edge of his bed, he cradled his hands to his chest and hiccuped quietly, avoiding the clock-radio. Each ticking minute worsened the bounce of his knees, breaths coming out in frantic puffs. Pure dread. Wondering, waiting, listening for the sound of the truck pulling in through the gate.

The thought crossed his mind that he might be sent away to live with Mum, wherever she was, and he spiralled further. It was too terrifying to think about. Leaving this place would be the end of the world. He wanted so desperately to burst into the kitchen and grab the phone and call, pray that Elijah would pick up, that he’d be home safe, that he wouldn’t be angry.

He stared at his door and waited, waited, waited.

Dad never came in.

Over dinner, hours later, nobody said a word. Harry cut into his steak with hands so jittery he scratched the plate and almost threw up right there at the table. But he ate everything, even the overdone mushy broccoli, and offered to wash the dishes. He washed everything twice and dried it all and put it away and flinched every time Pop so much as turned the page of his newspaper.

Breakfast followed in much the same way, but at the bench, watching the toaster with his back to the table, Harry closed his eyes and prayed that none if it had ever happened, prayed so desperately to go back in time, for rain, for _anything_ that might ensure that Pop would never say anything to Dad about what he saw at the river, that their lives could be normal, that Harry could show his bumps and bruises and dab betadine into his skin with misty eyes and pretend that everything would be okay again.

Two days later they found Pop face down in the dry soil, the door of an old cotton picker wide open.

Heart attack, the nurse said. Instant as a lightning strike. There was nothing they could have done. Dad still tried before they were aware of that detail.

He told Harry to stay put, frantic and mumbling and falling over himself to get back to the truck. He had to call an ambulance, he said. Had to call anybody he could to come out and help them. The truck roared and Dad gunned it back to the house and the tires unleashed a putrid cloud of dust, and in its wake Harry was left frozen, staring blankly at the back of Pop’s withered head.

He’d never seen Dad cry before that day, not even when Mum left. Tears of the shocked and quivery type, that he wiped away as they came, disappearing only when Pat arrived and forced Harry to finally look away from the body with a guiding hand to the side of his head.

It took an hour and a half for the paramedics to get to them. The soil, already ruined as it was, took on an all new kind of poisoning.

-

_‘You have one new voicemail message. Last message received—twenty-third of March, six-twenty p.m.’_

A beep.

_“Hey, kid.”_

He wishes he had a cigarette, something else to reach out and touch.

_“It’s me. Again. I, uh. I don’t know if you’ve been getting my messages. Maybe there’s a problem with the line.”_

Only a suggestion of the sun can be seen, and his own murky reflection in the speckled window.

_“I wish I’d known about what’s going on with Molly. I still don’t know anything, and I’m still trying to be there, okay? I still want to be there for you. But nobody returns my calls and I’m adrift, kid. Please keep me in the loop. Please. I want to come home but I can’t if I still feel like I’m…”_

Harry closes his eyes.

_“I’m sorry. I’m sorry it has to be this way. Um. Tell Ev I said Happy Birthday. Call me when you can, kid. Bye.”_

Vaguely, he registers the automated voice parroting at him. There’s more to hear, more numbers to press, old messages to delete, but instead he puts the phone back into place. His head is throbbing, his whole body sore, an ache in his calves and his back and—God. Swallowing, throat thick and claggy with it, he rests his forehead on the heels of his palms and pushes his fingers into his greasy hair.

He’s woken up too early for the hangover to hit. He’s still riding the slippery slope of the nosedive. 

_What have you done,_ he thinks desperately, curls gripped tight between his knuckles to distract himself from the ache that’s smacking him over the back of the head. It’s only five in the morning. There’s such a long day ahead. Getting to the farm in one piece and dealing with everything there, going over their bills and counting stock, and then picking up Molly. Fuck. Picking up his _truck_. He can’t believe he left it there and decided it’d be a good idea to get himself absolutely pissed and—

Movement from the living room. The _thud_ of sheets on the mattress, a creak. Harry pushes back from the bench with silent swiftness to duck down the hall, bathroom door closed carefully behind him.

The spray is weak but he sinks in the coolness of it, sticky skin going slick. _One, two, three, four._ His face flushes almost immediately. His stomach is still dried and cracked with the tacky remains of what he was too drunk to wipe away. Irritable, fingers shaking, Harry drags his hands over his face, back through his hair, a shudder passing over his shoulders and through his entire chest as the water comes down along his back.

_You’re in way over your head, boy. What were you thinking?_

He reaches for the soap _—eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one—_ and rubs it over his chest, along his arms, across his hips. He pauses there, blinking down with water-clogged lashes at the new bruises he finds. Fingerprints. Purple flowers left to bloom overtop the foundational soil of yellows and browns. Another just under his left nipple, and then lower, the inside of his right thigh bitten with little reds. Gingerly, he presses over each, trailing up. He reaches his chest and knows there’s one on his neck without having to lift his fingers, the phantom heat buzzing where the water catches it.

He stares at himself until he can’t any longer and the droop of his head is too dizzying. Eyes closed, he brings his hands up to cover his face again and lifts it to the milky, off-coloured ceiling, trying to calm his breathing.

It doesn’t work.

“Fuck,” he exhales, arms dropping to his sides uselessly. Steam has started to bounce up along the roof.

His head is a balloon that’s too full and his thoughts are the air inside, scrambling and scratching for an escape from the crushing frenzy yet completely weightless all at once. And what would be worse? To deflate, to burst at the seams? Or to do nothing at all? To simply stand and swelter until he’s completely shrivelled up, discoloured and lifeless, his thoughts going with him to that grave?

They filter to him in pieces, in the turning of a radio dial, static parted like a wispy curtain to reveal hazy, drawn out memories from the night before: The low rumble of the truck. The bright lights at the pub. The kiss with Tilda. The rhythm of Louis’ hands on the seats. The rhythm of his hands on Harry’s ribs. A spiral unwinds from there.

He’s lost count.

With a spike of panic he turns and wrenches the taps to the right. There’s still steam rising. Harry swears under his breath and slides the glass door open to pluck his towel from the rack. The bathroom is a foggy morning never experienced. A dream, a shot from a picture book, distant and unknown to him. Condensation rolls down the mirror, slow like a tongue.

Orange skims it’s shine across the murky window. Dawn is here and there’s no avoiding it.

With a swallow thick as cement, Harry towels roughly at his hair and tries to fight away the fear that the next time he turns a tap there’ll be nothing but the rattle of old pipes.

He expects Louis to still be asleep–if the throbbing of his own head is any measure of how unconscious he’d like to be–but when he tiptoes out into the hall he freezes. The front door is open and Louis is a shadow on the stoop. Only the fly-screen shields their silhouettes from one other; Louis with his notebook spread over bare thigh, and Harry in the mirage of the hallway with wet hair pearling water down his wonky spine. The world beyond the fine cross-hatch of metal is like fire.

Harry peers down the thin tunnel of the hall towards it, and it towards him. Finally, though, he’s able to move, and continues soundlessly to his room for fresh clothes, pausing each time he brushes over the bruises, collar pulled close up around his neck.

His sheets are a mess. His desk is a mess. Books have fallen from the shelves, all the dormant dust displaced. He picks up a photo frame from where it’s landed facedown on the floor. It’s a faded picture of him tucked up on Dad’s lap in one of the cotton pickers. There’s a tiny chip in the glass. Carefully, he puts it back in its place.

He straightens the sheets but once they’re tucked in he just stares. At the dent in the pillows and the clothes kicked under the frame, at his belt from the night before sprawled like a dead snake, at his bedside drawer still hanging half open, the contents disrupted and messily shoved aside. The static parts again and there are gripping hands and a hot mouth, the rawness of being touched, the puffed gasp of _fuck, yeah,_ against the shell of his ear, and Harry moaning to the ceiling with how good it felt, fistfuls of Louis’ hair, his own hair, everything coming crashing down.

He wipes a shaky hand across his forehead and leaves the edge of his palm there, pushing firmly. Louis is still outside.

Frantic is a kind word to describe how Harry pulls up the bedding. He flings the pillows from their cases and tugs so abruptly at the old underlay that the left corner rips, and then he bundles it all into his arms and hurries back down the hall, dumping it into the washer and throwing in a ridiculous amount of detergent and slamming the start button over and over until finally, after a confused gurgle, it begins to fill. He’s not supposed to be using the washing machine for this, not at all if he can help it, but he’s crawling out of his skin and this is the only way he can think to begin fixing it. Only once the sheets are spinning and the machine is whirring and the bile in his throat has sunk back into his bubbling stomach does he finally have the ability to step away.

In the stillness of the kitchen he flicks on the kettle, makes himself cereal and avoids clinking the spoon against the side of the bowl as he eats facing the cupboards. This is normal. And fine. Breakfast, then the drive, then back into Bourke. Three steps, with intricate steps in between that he knows well. The familiarity that haunts him will be what gets him through this, and then it’ll all be over.

Scuffed footsteps. The telling creak of hinges. He glances over his shoulder and Louis is there, barefoot in the doorway with messy hair and sunken eyes and his singlet half-strewn across his hickey-bitten chest.

Their eyes catch, skim, then part ways almost immediately. Harry turns back to his bowl. Louis clears his throat, tosses his notebook onto the table with a _thud,_ and reaches for the fridge.

They don’t speak a word to each other.

Louis eats his breakfast out on the stoop. Harry sneaks glances from the window, the corner of it filled with Louis’ drowsy figure, shadows flat to the ground. Harry only makes it halfway through his cereal before he can’t stomach anything more. Milk was a mistake and the sogginess is stomach-turning.

Bizarrely, he doesn’t think regret is what’s making him so skittish, so flushed, so out of his mind.

He wants to ask, is the thing. He wants to sit down on the stoop and press his face into Louis’ neck, shift his hands under his shirt and cautiously rediscover the bruises he left of his own, to see if they match up with the little bites and thumbprints left behind. He wants, and he shouldn’t, and now his tongue has grown too big for his mouth, dry and dense with every word he’ll never allow himself to say.

He knows that his wish of Louis packing it in and leaving might become a reality sooner than he thought it would.

They have to take the old Barina to Molly’s and it struggles along the drive. It’s completely cramped. Louis takes the wheel. Harry’s knees and legs are squished awkwardly against the glovebox because the levers are broken and whoever sat in the passenger seat last must have been about half the size of them both. In the back, Pippa glares at them intermittently in the rearview mirror.

It’s a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. No music playing, just Pippa’s breath and the concerning rattle coming from the engine. Harry is unable and unwilling to do much but stare out the window, which he doesn’t usually get to do. After only ten minutes he finds it makes him queasy. When he’s driving he can pretend that in between his glances out to the dryness there are small oases to be found, mounds of grass and healthy trees and shrubs plumped up from new rain. As they pulse down toward Molly’s there is truly only red and bones.

He feeds the calves. Louis stays at the house and Harry takes one of the old quad bikes out into the paddocks, unable to trust that the Barina won’t fall to pieces the second it jolts over a pothole. He gets back to the house late morning, sweat slicked up all over his arms and neck. His hair is glued up close to the underside of his chin when he tugs off the helmet. The relief only lasts a second, one suffocating breath transitioning into the next.

Inside, it’s unnaturally quiet. Harry flicks the telly on without hesitation and leaves the channel without checking what’s on. As he turns, he catches sight of the pictures on the wall, Pat there in the centre, and an old, grainy shot of Harry and Elijah knee deep in river water when they were just boys.

Harry looks away quickly and takes a seat at the table.

Bills, big red stamps, thumb punching into the calculator. Dogs barking and the shudder of the dust. Low telly hum. The soft brush of pencil on paper. By the kitchen bench, the old clock ticks out into the heavy silence.

If there were a time for them to finally break this agonising stalemate, it would be now. This is the part in which Harry is supposed to look up to find Louis watching him back, both of them ready to break the tension, to meet eye to eye and grit their teeth and promise that this won’t happen again.

The prevailing quiet is a terrifying testament to what they both could be thinking, despite how hard Harry is willing those thoughts away.

It shouldn’t happen again. He doesn’t want it to happen again.

Elijah was the first and last boy to ever touch him. Harry never imagined that changing, and not even because he loved Elijah once and would likely never love anyone the same, but because never did he picture being able to touch somebody in this town again.

This is a scab near-healed and left to turn white, to remain forever closed and caught rough in the creases of his hands. He’s been picking at it, though, he knows he has. It’s been driving him mad for weeks. Proximity is a killer, and a body close, a man in their house, closer than Harry ever lets his own friends, is incentive enough to peel that scab back day by day, piece by piece, just for a tiny peek at what lies beneath.

Now he’s sliced it open completely and he doesn’t know how to stem the sudden blood flow. It’s all he can think about.

He runs his fingers through his hair and hopes Louis doesn’t notice the way they tremble each time he punches numbly at the calculator.

-

As they arrive in Bourke with evening drawing near, everyone is in various stages of recovery. Worst of them all is Ned, a shock to absolutely no-one. He remains asleep even as Pippa licks at the gaps between his fingers, through each closing door and flicker of the telly, snoring lightly with his limbs thrown wildly across the couch. Ev complains of a ‘champagne headache’ and sips feebly at a can of _Solo_ over dinner, Molly much the same, though the circles under her eyes and the drawn out lines of her cheeks are likely the result of a restless sleep.

There’s an obvious and palpable tension in the room as soon as he and Louis enter, and to combat this Harry goes into an overdrive of joking and teasing, almost frantic in the way he wakes Ned with a squeeze of his hands once dinner is ready, the big hug he pulls Ev into and the kiss he presses to Molly’s cheek. If he fills up the room with antics he doesn’t have to explain why he and Louis are resolutely not looking at each other, not exchanging a word, and sitting as far from each other as they can.

Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it isn’t. All Harry knows is that here, in this little room, he can’t let himself so much as think of the night before.

He focuses on Molly instead. She seems okay, if a little distant, but Ev is there, always there, and over dinner the conversation around the table flows freely. If he and Louis never speak a word to each other directly nobody picks up on it. Instead Ned goes on and on about Jimmy Barnes and Mark Seymour and his teenage years, the same way he always does after there’s a birthday or a party or any excuse, really, to queue his jukebox with the songs that have filled up the adolescence of everybody at the table.

Harry sits and listens and drags his fork through his mash and thinks about Dad.

“All good love stories should start in a pub,” Ned is saying, dabbing up the leftover gravy on his plate with a slice of bread. “No better place for a man to meet his missus.”

“You’re a true romantic,” Ev says sarcastically.

“What, I didn’t win you over by doing _Alone With You_ on the karaoke machine?” Ned says. “Tell me I’m not a dead ringer for Jeremy Oxley, Ev. Say it right to my face.”

Ev only laughs, head thrown back with a hand over her chest. Harry watches them, watches as Ned grins around his mouthful and Ev tries to kick him under the table, the lines by their eyes deepening when they smile at each other. For the first time all night, Harry risks a glance Louis’ way. He’s watching on with a tiny smile all his own, fork poised between his fingers, and there Harry gets stuck on his knuckles, the tan of them, and then his jaw, the tip of his nose, and his mouth–

“That’ll be you soon, kid.” Harry snaps his attention back to Ned, blinking slowly. Ned winks. “It’s been a long time coming with you two.”

“Who?”

“Tilda, of course,” Ned says. Harry must start to flush. He can’t quite feel it. He looks down at his plate and shrugs, but Ned is quick to mistake his silence for some giddy, teenage kind of embarrassment. “She’s a lovely girl.”

“I know.”

“Ned,” Ev scolds. “Leave him be.”

“What?” Ned says, affronted. “What’s wrong with a bit of young love?”

Harry needs a cigarette. He needs it now. He needs to get up and get away.

“What about you, mate?” Ned continues his inquisition, turning to Louis. “Any lucky ladies waiting back home in the city?”

Louis clears his throat delicately. “Not exactly.”

“Not _exactly!_ ” Ned claps Louis on the back. “What’s gotten into you two, hey? When I was your age…”

For the first time since this morning in the vulnerable, early light of the kitchen, their eyes meet. Harry expects the hostility. He knows it’s radiating from himself. But it’s quick to dim, quick to fall flat and give way and break, because there’s something piercing that holds Harry’s breath in his chest with a closed fist. In Louis’ face he finds the rarest form of expression, the thing he’s become starved for ever since Elijah left, that he buries himself into his sheets to find, tearing his hair out over it.

Understanding.

It overwhelms him immediately.

“Can I be excused?” he asks abruptly, interrupting Ned’s triumphant tale of outback youth.

His knife and fork clatter as he stacks them awkwardly, already getting up before Ev answers. He drops his plate into the half-full sink and whistles for Pippa to follow him. She emerges from her spot under the table, mouth wet with saliva, no doubt being fed scraps by Ned all night, but she always comes to him when he needs her, and together they make a quick descent, conversation picking up behind them as they go. He hears Louis’ voice interlaced with it, Ned and Molly’s laughter and Ev being the mediator amongst it all.

Then the door closes behind him, and the heat rushes to him like dead flies to an open wound, suddenly suffocating.

“Fuck,” he whispers to himself.

Running a hand down his face doesn’t help, nor does a pinch to the inside of his arm, kicking the back of his heel into the bricks or closing his eyes and counting slowly, inhaling, exhaling. Nothing helps.

It’s only once he’s crouched by the dead river, one of Jai’scigarettes stolen in his fingers and a brief little flame cupped with his shaky palms, that he can try making sense of any number of the thoughts that are swimming through his mind. The smoke ghosts upward, dull puffs saturated so that looking through them and up to the sky looks instead like peering down into the murky depths of a pool caught by moonlight.

Pippa rustles her way through the river bed, overturning leaves and chasing the hum of bugs. Harry leans his cheek on his knee and closes his eyes.

Sometimes, it’s impossible for him not to make a disappointment out of everything in this life. Pessimism is never something he wanted to cling to, but it’s become part of him now. He doesn’t know how to stop himself from thinking the worst of everything, everyone, himself included, and each time he thinks that train of thought is just that foul seed growing larger inside his stomach, he thinks of Elijah, of every moment they had together, the way Harry cowered and curdled and fought to stop himself from turning into a steeled version of who he was supposed to be.

Lately, it seems that he’s already given in.

If he breaks away from Tilda he’ll ruin everything between them, between them and Jai, their families, everything they’re connected to. If he stays on this path, if they end up married, with kids, a place of their own, all the things he knows are supposed to elate him, he’ll ruin himself. He knows he will. He already is.

Tears bead up as he sucks feebly on the end of his cigarette.

And then there’s Dad and Pop. Pat. All these people he’s made promises to, the kind of promises made not with words but with echoes, with expectations and calluses and splinters that he’s never been able to pluck from his worn fucking hands. And even then, even if somehow he manages to be happy with her, the farm is still dead, the cattle fading into nothing, the ground as dry and cracked as his flimsy heart. He doesn’t know how to make it better anymore. He doesn’t think he ever has.

“Ev said I might find you down here.”

Harry whirls, cigarette paused to his lips.

Louis steps amongst the dead branches and dry leaves, treading through it warily, arms out for balance. He sits beside Harry after a beat of hesitation. They watch each other until Harry can’t bear it anymore, already too vulnerable, already too exhausted.

He inhales deeply. There’s hardly anything left off the butt now.

“Those things will kill you, y’know,” Louis says.

 _Great._ Harry exhales to the side. “You could say that about anything these days.”

“I suppose.”

Harry holds the bud out between them. Louis takes it, inhales a slow pull, and crushes it into the ground. The darkness is heavy, everything around them distinguished only by outlines, by a staggered and stilted depth of vision. Tiny embers flutter out between them, a sparkle of orange that quickly dissolves. Harry wonders if Louis honed in on the dampness of the paper, the place Harry’s lips had just been, if he’s thinking about it, too. About everything.

“So you’re with her, then,” Louis says.

“It’s complicated.”

“How so?”

“It just is,” Harry says.

He can feel himself growing defensive, curling in, hackles rising. He doesn’t see how it’s any of Louis’ business, how any of this will add to his articles and his stupid television show. How any of this will get them out of the mess they’ve made for themselves.

“Do you love her?”

“Jesus Christ,” Harry exhales, coupled with a short, lifeless laugh. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

“You’re obviously upset.”

“Obviously.”

_We had sex. We had sex and we’re not going to talk about it, are we? Let’s talk about me ruining Tilda’s life instead._

Louis sighs, arms curled around his shins as he looks out into the darkness. “I’m not trying to pry. I thought you might want somebody to talk to.”

 _Somebody who understands._ That goes unspoken, but Louis may as well have brushed the words up against Harry’s ear. His skin prickles like Louis did just that.

“I came out here to be alone, actually,” Harry says, going for lofty and unbothered but landing somewhere more in the realm of feeble, voice edged with hurt. “I don’t know what makes you think I’d talk to you about any of this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologising to me.”

“Apologising is the least I can do at this point.”

“Louis,” Harry says, thumb and forefinger pressed into the inner corners of his eyes. “Leave it.”

_Keep going. Reach out. Touch me so I don’t have to think anymore._

Youth was a strange and naive place. Often, despite what he makes of it now that he has the power of hindsight, Harry wishes he could go back there. All the little things that happened in his life melted back into the blissful ignorance of being a child, never measurable against the stagnant memories he has. The trail of dust behind Mum’s car. Pop’s heart attack. The first time he and Elijah held hands.

Now, there are no little things. It’s all so terrifyingly huge.

-

Life goes on. Time waits for nobody, for nothing.

Harry retracts. He visits Ev only when Louis forces them into the truck, laptop in hand and his notebook full. In the morning, Harry spends more time with the calves than he’s supposed to, sick at how thin they’re getting, how they’re stumbling, the older ones starting to suffer without pellets, little Bella all skin and bones and hollow eyes. Molly watches him like a hawk out in the paddocks but Harry doesn’t say a word. If she asks him what’s wrong, he’ll ask her back, and lying to each other is what they promised they wouldn’t do.

He can’t stop thinking about that night.

He wishes he’d had more to drink. He wishes it was hazy so he could forget. Everything leading up to that moment is a blur,and then erupts in sudden clarity. The soft brush of fabric hitting the floor, their hands, and then in the hazy aftermath, drifting into sleep, the memory shifts and warps and Elijah is there. Time has ripped apart and through the gap that Harry peeks through he sees himself under the shade of an ancient ghost-gum with his head on Elijah’s shoulder.

It worsens as the darkness comes. Louis leaves the telly on and its light flutters like morse-code under the strip of his door. Harry pulls his knees into his chest until it becomes too hot to do so, sweat slicked up along his neck and spine, and clenches his eyes shut. He’s been here before. He’s felt this very pressure at his heart on nights just like these, but never has he felt so unable to escape even himself. Never has it been so difficult to decide whether he forces himself into sleep to avoid thinking or stays awake and lets the minutes drag on, avoiding the day that follows.

-

“Well, spit it out then.”

Harry kicks at the ground.

“Spit what out?”

It’s late noon and each movement is like rolling through a bed of burning coals. He’s trying to remain still, back sweating against the bricks, eyes squinted almost shut. He left his sunglasses in the truck and he doesn’t want to move until there’s some kind of eclipse, until the sun stops burning into his skin like it’s looking for a way to break through.

“What’s going on?” Jai says, perched at the plastic table. It always looks worse in the daylight, dirty and full of cobwebs. “You’ve been in a foul mood and it’s pissing me off. So, out with it.”

“It’s nothing,” Harry insists. Through his bleary vision, sunspots bubbling and glowing pink, Jai’s glare intensifies. “It’s hot and the bills aren’t stopping anytime soon. Same old shit.”

“Keep going.”

Harry clenches his jaw. “I haven’t been speaking to Dad much. Money is tight. What else do you want me to say? You want me to tell you every single thing that’s been running me down, Jai? Do you want a list?”

“Don’t be a cunt.”

“That’s my default setting.” Harry smiles sweetly. His eyes water. The light has found a crack. “Sorry, mate.”

Jai sighs.

Distantly, Harry wonders if Louis is done with his emails, if he’s finished off his phone calls so they can leave everything behind. Ev will try and get them to stay for dinner, but Harry doesn’t want to go upstairs again. He knows she’ll rope him into taking things home, their money, the pubs money, funding Harry’s pantry. It has to stop.

“You need to ask us for help,” Jai says, in a way so unlike him. “If it’s money, you need to ask us for help and we’ll help.”

“I don’t want—”

“Will you stop being such a stubborn bastard for one second and just _listen_ to me?”

“Oh, come on!” Harry pushes off the wall. “Who’s going to loan us money around here, Jai? We’re all living off scraps. If I take out any more loans I’ll fucking explode. I’m not taking everyone else down with me.”

Jai stands. “Then let us _be there_ for you, at least. Every time you drive away I wonder if I’m ever going to see you again, you know that?”

Harry can pretend it’s the sun but he knows an onset of tears are forming. “Don’t say it like that.”

“How else am I supposed to say it?” Jai yells. 

Harry closes his eyes. He can’t stand to look into Jai’s face. The wreck is right there. The last few months of their lives ingrained into every line of stress and hurt.

“Can you drop it?” Harry begs. “Please?”

“Is it Louis?”

He’s sure his heart stops beating. “What?”

“Is he giving you a hard time?” Jai continues, rambling onwards. “He is, isn’t he? Fucking prick. I thought he was a good bloke but if—”

“No, _Jesus_. It’s fine!”

Jai doesn’t seem convinced. He points Harry’s way menacingly, but all Harry sees is Jai at ten, twiggy, chest-puffed out, hoping to commandeer the monkey bars from boys much older than they were. “If there’s something wrong, and you don’t tell me…”

“Fucking hell.” Harry laughs shortly, sarcasm his only defence. “Alright. Sorry, Mum.”

It’s out before he registers the words. Jai’s expression changes in an instant, everything Harry hates to see pointed his way. He didn’t even mean it like that, but he’s sure he’ll find some way to connect it to everything else. If he lets it linger on it’s own it’ll fester. Maybe it’s easier to spit it out and lock it out with a thought that’s worse.

“You’re my best mate,” Jai says. “I’m supposed to look out for you.”

“I know,” Harry says. _I’ve kept so much from you for so long._ “I’m sorry for being like this.”

“Sorry for pushing you,” Jai says. He claps a hand over Harry’s shoulder. “I know how much you hate it.”

They were only supposed to go out for a smoke. A catch up. That’s all this was. Ten minutes ago, they were laughing over the silliest things. He felt okay. The day was fine. Good, even, in their circumstances. No cattle down in the paddocks. No big red stamps on their letters. He and Louis haven’t fought yet, no nasty quips. A measly slice of peace.

The burning of Jai’s cigarette was the countdown to the explosion. _How can you afford to smoke those?_ That’s all Harry said, and Jai answered with _I can’t, really._ Now they’re here, and Harry doesn’t know how to find the middle ground anymore.

They meander upstairs, eager to leave the sun. Louis’ still tucked in the corner with the phone balanced between his shoulder and ear, typing away.

“Are you burnt?” Ev squints at them from her spot on the couch, newspaper spread over her thighs. Down the hall, the shower is running.

“No,” Harry says, brushing his fingers over his cheeks. “I was only out there for half an hour.”

“Ten minutes is all you need these days, lovie,” Ev says with a raise of her brow. “Sunscreen?”

“In my glovebox.”

“It should be on your face.”

Harry rolls his eyes and drapes himself over the back of the old couch. It’s supposed to be playful but he clings for longer than he was meant to, arms wrapped tight over Ev’s shoulders. She smells familiar. He closes his eyes and tries to sap the comfort.

Just like Harry suspected, Ev coaxes them into staying, chicken already in the oven and veggies boiling on the stove. Ned flicks on _The Footy Show_ , settling into the couch to listen. The season is just a week away now. God, it’s nearly the end of March. The thought sticks with him all through dinner, when the phone rings and Louis jumps up to answer, glued back to his computer with an apologetic wince Ev’s way, but she waves him off and smiles down at her plate.

Louis has been here a month. Pat’s been gone for almost three. Harry hasn’t seen Dad in just as much time.

He lowers his fork, appetite completely vanished. All that remains now is the need to get home, to pick up the phone and spew his apologies and sit and listen to every single message he’s managed to neglect.

“Is it alright, lovie?” Ev asks. Harry hopes he doesn’t look as young as he feels in that moment, the soft edge to her voice an apparition to a time when his socked feet didn’t reach the floor, swinging back and forth and picking through his dinner because he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Mum had slammed the door hours prior, Dad’s angry fist going through the wall, the grumble of the truck.

“Great,” Harry manages. “Just not feeling too crash hot.”

“Hm.” Ev frowns. “Have some juice before you leave. There’s aloe vera in the bathroom if you need it.”

“I’ll be fine,” Harry says, but Ev has never been one to take that as an answer.

Across the room, Harry catches Louis’ eye.

Just like that, it’s all he can think about.

-

They get home late. Much later than Harry wanted. Louis was waiting on an email, and stuck between Ned and Ev on the couch there wasn’t much Harry could do but not to fall asleep, distracting himself by running his fingers down the grains of Pippa’s fur, the same way he used to when she was a puppy. It was one of the only ways he could stop her from squirming and yapping. They dropped Molly home first and the very act of pulling away from the farm and leaving her there again brought a tense silence over them, Harry’s hands white knuckled on the wheel, forcing himself not to turn around.

The day is dying and heat flies flat across the empty fields, beams of orange pulsing up along the glass, a lucky few shooting through and into their eyes as Harry swings the truck up to the front of the house. He’s exhausted. He wants to sleep, to forget his conversation with Jai, to forget everything he said, to call Dad and wonder if he’ll pick up. He needs to listen to those voicemails and then he needs to be dead to the world until his alarm rings.

He opens the door to let Pippa out, but when he goes to follow Louis’ voice cuts through the quiet.

“Can we talk?”

Harry glances back at him, to the house, back again. The look of uncertainty in Louis’ eyes makes him stay. Harry nods and shuts the door again. Pippa’s already running out towards the sun.

For a long while, they’re silent. Harry picks at the loose skin of his thumb.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go,” Louis says, staring down at his own fingers. “I can stay at the B&B in Bourke and make the drive myself.”

A month ago, Harry would have gladly lent over and opened Louis’ door for him.

He can’t even bring himself to move.

Louis finally looks up at him, brows pulled together. “I’m still writing. I’m still going to work on the show. But I’m supposed to be here to help you, not to make things worse. You look exhausted. I don’t want to make it worse.”

Harry is left speechless. They simply stare at each other, Louis’ eyes strangely shiny, swallowing intermittently, jaw clenching each time.

“Do you want to go?” Harry asks.

Perhaps it’s cruel to ask the question, but Louis is just as cruel in his answer.

“No,” he says, a whispered admission. “Not really.”

He’s bathed gold and Harry wants to put his hands on Louis’ chest and push him out into the dirt. He doesn’t know what that means, except for all the ways that he does. And isn’t that always the way with them, with everything in Harry’s fucking life.

_One last touch, even if it means separation. One last chance._

Exhaling, he finally manages to look away. He finds Pop’s eyes, that chip in the corner of the glass spreading like a half spun spider web.

“Who’s that?” Louis asks.

“My Pop,” Harry answers, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Pop’s cracked face, his voice swinging around Harry’s skull like a siren. _Keep your head on straight, boy. Keep your head on straight._

“I always see you looking at him.”

Things are moving so fast. It’s unbearably hot inside the truck. He should have left it running. He should have known.

_You were looking at me. That’s what you’ve been doing all this time, isn’t it? Looking at me._

Harry turns his head. Louis is already there, staring, eyes wide.

_And I’ve been watching you back._

Harry reaches for the glass case, unhooks it from the mirror and throws it at his feet. Instead of bringing his hands back to his lap he curls them in the front of Louis’ shirt instead.

Their lips crash on a rush of breath and Louis is quick to latch on, hands finding Harry’s face first, thumbs pressing in. Maybe Ev was right about the sunburn. The touch is searing. It hurts in a way that everything seems to now. But the pain of fingers and nails and the pressure of needy touch is nothing compared to the frenzy it inspires.

Harry only intended for this to be a kiss. Very quickly, it dissolves into more. The truck is small and he almost smacks his head on the roof, but he finds his way into Louis’ lap, barely breathing as their mouths drag. A bite to his bottom lip. Fingers twisting in the back of his shirt.

Louis’ palms sweep smooth and steady from Harry’s shoulders to his hips. Harry’s eyes burn at the sensation.

They should open a window or tumble out into the open air together. The heat is near unbearable but it makes their mouths slick, and Harry will give that up for nothing. He cradles Louis’ face and keeps them close, and thinks of the sun slanting down and hitting the cross and the swelling, terrifying thought of being so small.

He exhales when they press together. There’s no coming back from this now.

It’s still light enough outside that if someone were to drive past, they’d be able to see in. The need to make this fast takes over even though Harry knows that there’s nobody out here to catch them. The franticness crawls up his spine and down his arms. He reaches for Louis’ jeans and fumbles all clumsy with the zipper, their foreheads pressed together, panting, mouths just brushing now as Harry tries to get his own jeans unbuttoned at the same time.

Louis’ fingers trace his wrists. Slow, steady, always so in control.

“Hey, hey. Let me,” he says.

Harry catches their lips and presses close enough to hurt, their brows furrowed together.

The first touch is almost too much for him to bear. He isn’t drunk. He doesn’t have the luxury of darkness to hide himself away. Sunset pours in and Harry collapses into Louis’ neck, looking down between them, the way Louis’ fingers move, his own slack and simply feeling. Louis slides his spare hand up Harry’s neck, curls gripped tight in his knuckles. Harry’s mouth parts. He can’t stop himself from gasping, from whimpering whisper soft, from nudging their lips together until Louis presses up close, and then Harry can’t stop kissing him, refuses to, holding on and touching, touching, touching.

Desperation wins out over both of them. It isn’t slow, nor is it gentle. Louis bites at Harry’s shoulder through his shirt and Harry retaliates, sucking a mark into Louis’ neck before he can think to stop himself. _There._ _Now I know you’ll be bruised just like me. Now I know where to touch you, now I know how to make it hurt._

The sun is almost gone, sky smacked magenta and bloody by the fever of the day. Harry steadies himself with a hand to the roof. The other is curled white-knuckled in Louis’ shirt. They’re a speck in a sea of red. Sinking into foamy waves together.

After, sprawled in Louis’ lap, Harry stares and tries to catch his breath. He needs to move. He must. He tells himself this over and over, even as Louis rubs circles into his hips, thumbs pressing in with a rare gentleness, with no intention to bruise, but to comfort.

Harry’s throat tightens. The anguish, the desperation, that’s what he can handle. He knows it like the ins and outs of an old friend. But this sweetness, the hazy look in Louis’ eyes as they blink at each other, is somewhere Harry dare not venture.

He reaches for Louis’ wrists and pulls them away.

A kiss alone would have made for enough of a catastrophe. But he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to.

Swallowing thickly, he tucks himself back into his jeans, half-wet come and all, and slides back to the drivers side.

“Do you want me to go?”

Harry isn’t sure how much time has passed when Louis speaks. It’s getting dark, sticky shadows everywhere. His pulse is still thudding against his temples. He lets his chin loll onto his shoulder. Louis is pink in his cheeks. _Yes_ should be the answer that leaves Harry’s mouth. _Yes_ is the only reasonable thing he can say.

“You could stay,” he says, hating how rough his voice sounds, hating that even he doesn’t know the full extent of his words and what they imply, what will happen between them from this point onwards.

“Okay,” Louis says. Harry stares at the purple shadow blossoming under his jaw. “Okay.”

-

The magnitude of it all doesn’t hit until hours later.

He can’t sleep. It’s too fucking hot to sleep. His brain won’t shut up, yet each time he attempts to untangle his thoughts nothing bounces back to him but the reflection of his own breathing. In the dark, splayed atop the sheets with his chest to the ceiling, strange vulnerability overcomes him, even alone. The blinds are down but still the moon creeps in, the sky so clear and thin that each gun-blue ray finds home in the cracks in the ground and the gaps by the window and the pores of Harry’s skin, physically heavy in its presence.

Reluctant, hazy, head lolling like it’s pulled on a string, Harry turns his face from the window and blinks wetly.

Through the shadows the door looks malleable and thin, a mere gathering of shadows that he could slip his hands through and part like inky fabric to peer into the living room and chance looking Louis’ way. The thought crosses his mind as the minutes tick. There are so many ways he could slink out there, curl up under those sheets, press his face against Louis’ ribs and wish and hope.

He remains still, takes in a shuddery breath as he turns his face to the ceiling and crosses his arms over his chest. The touch raises goosebumps.

He wishes Elijah were here, but an Elijah from a time in which they still shared their secrets. He wishes there was somebody else who hasn’t touched him and who he hasn’t touched but could still understand and be understood by. A friend, a stranger, a nameless face with only a voice in the dark. There’s nobody here to talk to but himself, and of all the people in his life, it’s him who he trusts the least.

He’s always been weak beneath all his exteriors. He knows it. There was nothing they could have done, any of them, Pop with his squeezing hands and Dad shifting anxiously through the hall, Mum worlds away. On the outside he’s always been able to pretend that he can be the man he’s been brought up to become.

He has a good head on his shoulders, loyal to his community, tied down to this place by the strings of his heart. Those are the lesser things, created all over the place by all kinds of people that he’d have been brought up with anyway.

But the qualities that matter are the ones that twist his insides. Being the echo of Pop, of Dad. Being needed in ways he naturally shies away from. Carrying death on his shoulders so others don’t have to, carrying the weight of any and all of his own scars because to share them would be a weakness to the people he’s supposed to protect, to reassure, to be the very picture of strength to.

All his life he’s been a picture that somebody else painted of himself, firm brushstrokes and rough canvas and harsh, dark lines. But over time paintings fade, decay and weep and peel. They turn to powder without preservation. Heat can burn a living hell into even the coldest of things.

And now, crumbled, cracked, anybody could flick a nail under a dried piece of this mirage and peek at what’s really underneath. Succumbing to that very thought makes Harry want to tear at his own skin just to get it over with. The more he paints over it, the more claggy, broken layers he adds, the worse the tearing away becomes, the more it hurts, like skin grazed from knees, gravel stuck in the gaps. Splinters buried bone deep.

He’s never wanted to let himself be seen. After Elijah left he couldn’t stand the thought of looking at himself in that way, held under a microscope, under sunlight. It’s always easier to forget, to compartmentalise, to paint the scene as a dream rather than as reality. But he didn’t paint a dream, he realises now. It was more of a nightmare; this empty house, these empty fields, his near-empty rib cage with his small and stuttering heart, the loneliness seeking him out like the moon does now.

He can still feel Louis, his hands. Harry images the shift of their bodies, Louis’ fingers parting his knees, bundling in his clothes, pushing through his hair. All he can see are those dirty layers peeling back, falling around them and onto the sheets like plaster dust from above, Harry laying amongst it with his eyes closed while Louis continues to pick him apart piece by rotten piece.

Maybe he should have known. There’s only so long the heart can last when it’s dangled on the edge of exhaustion, and Louis, here from that first day with his pens and his paper and too curious for his own good, has Harry laid out like a scattered puzzle, playing with lost pieces as he very well pleases.

A journalist, of all people. Who better than to arrive with a pen when all the others have been busy throwing paint, not caring where it lands, where it goes, so long as the canvas is covered up. And here comes the writer, tip thin like a blade to scratch and weasel his way down to the surface.

Harry turns onto his side and closes his eyes.

_You sure know how to pick them, don’t you, kid?_

-

_‘You have six new voicemail messages. Last message received—first of April, ten twenty-three a.m.’_

A beep.

“ _Hey, kid. It’s me. Again. Take care of yourself today. Take care of the others. I, um. I miss you. Give me a call soon, okay? I’m thinking of you. Keep your head up, mate. Pat’d be proud of you._ ”

That heavy quiet, the clearing of a wet throat.

“ _Bye, kid. I’ll be home soon, alright? I promise._ ”

-

The pub is winding down to a close, the townsfolk able to spare loose change on dinner scraping their plates. Harry looks down into the amber haze of his drink and listens to Jai and Louis talk instead of contributing anything himself. Each time he catches sight of that tiny picture stuck up on the fridge he can’t look away for minutes at a time.

Upstairs, Molly, Ev and Ned are sharing a bottle of red wine, candles lit all balmy gold in that little room. Harry could only stare into the melting wax for so long before he had to leave, the wet pool of it making his eyes water. Down here, with the low hum of the dishwashers on the other side of the wall and the rustle and tinkling of cutlery and newspapers, there’s enough space for him to have a moment of his own.

Three months is like a blip of nothingness, but also like time has been stretched beyond paper thin.

“Refill, H?”

Harry glances up. Jai grabs the near empty glass before Harry says a word.

“Are you staying?” Foam bubbles over the edge of the glass as Jai sets it down again, shiny and caught in light. Harry takes a slow swig of it before answering.

“Just for tonight,” he says, eyes lowered again. For once, home is the last place he wants to be. He doesn’t want to drive, to be anywhere but here, with Ev and Ned just down the hall if could ever admit to needing them. Louth is too big, too lifeless. He can’t let himself think about it.

He gets progressively hazy on beer. Jai keeps his glass full. If Harry concentrates hard enough he can pretend that Louis is a black spot in his vision, that each brush of their legs doesn’t start him shivering, that each time their eyes catch, he doesn’t look at Louis’ mouth and hate himself for it. He’s tired of trying to process so much. He wishes he could skip this entire day and sleep through it buried beneath the sheets, heat and all.

A palm brushes his shoulder.

“Hey.” It’s Tilda, face all calm and sensitive when Harry turns to her. She’s in her uniform, hair pinned back, and her thumb rubs tender into the curve of his neck. “Okay?”

“I’m fine,” Harry says, and he isn’t sure if he imagines it when Tilda’s eyes start to dampen. “Hey?”

“Sorry,” she whispers, and he pushes back from the bar and leads her outside without a word. She hiccups into the back of her wrist.

They huddle by the bricks, away from the bright light. Tilda wraps her arms over her stomach. Harry stands in front of her, unable to do anything but wait and dread what’s to come.

“Sorry,” Tilda repeats, wiping at her eye with the back of her hand. “Shit day, y’know.”

“I know.”

“I’m just, like…” She shrugs, helpless. “I’m tired of missing people?”

Harry ducks his head.

“I miss Pat,” Tilda continues. “I miss having Lij around. He never fucking calls me. We used to talk all the time. And I know it’s not your fault, but I miss you, too. I miss your Dad.”

“Tils—”

“It’s such bullshit,” Tilda says, eyes welling up again, voice small. Harry pulls her into his chest but she doesn’t hug him back, keeps her arms tucked up close. He doesn’t blame her. He cups the back of her head as she cries, plays as gently as he can with her hair, and tries not to cry himself. “It didn’t feel this way last month. Still too fucking numb from it, you now?”

“I know,” Harry says. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

The guilt festers in his stomach like a locust storm, eating him from the inside. There is no winning here, no way to make this okay. Any pity he has for himself leaves him sick, because he doesn’t deserve it, not when Tilda is crying into his chest. It’s not about him. It never has been. But when she finally laces her arms around his neck and presses a kiss to his mouth, he can’t help but feel like he’s falling apart, like a monster when he kisses her back.

“God, I’m a mess. Tell me I’m pretty or something, why don’t you?” Tilda says, breathless, with a wet laugh. She pulls back and brushes her palms up over her cheeks, face still crumbling.

She’s beautiful, but it’s never been about that, either.

“You don’t need me to tell you,” Harry says, and the sincerity is both real and the worst kind of twisted lie. _You’re a coward, boy. A coward._

He has very few clear, real memories with his Dad from boyhood. Many of them are blacked out by the overhanging shadow of Pop’s figure, hard to decipher through the dust. But there are rare nights that come to him. VHS tapes and late night movies that Dad let him watch sometimes once Pop was snoring and they both couldn’t sleep. And in this memory he can’t recall what they were watching, but he remembers pink cascading up the walls and a hero kissing a girl and the sentimental swelling of an orchestra, and he’d tugged on Dad’s sleeve and asked him what it would be like to fall in love, because at that age any time he watched a movie or read a story about love he could never understand it. Dad said he didn’t know.

Drowning, maybe. That’s what comes to Harry then. Tilda brushes his hair from his eyes and he thinks of twigs in the Darling and imagines them curling around his toes one by one, the water level rising and flooding his mouth each time he reaches down and tug them away, the water level draining and parching him each time he starts to kick towards the safety of the bank. He’s sure Elijah told him a story like that once about a doomed King. Another memory he can’t quite perceive, but this time it’s because he doesn’t want to let himself see it.

They go back inside. Tilda heads upstairs, Harry to the bar, and nobody says a word as he picks up his glass, magically filled to the brim again.

Under the bar-top, Louis’ knuckle brushes his knee.

-

Glass smashing and a piercing siren and the high squeal of metal—and then stillness as Harry blinks awake with a sudden inhale, staring up into the darkness.

The shock of the nightmare slides gradually into place against the numbness of his limbs, the pins-and-needles that have gathered at his ankles from hanging off the edge of the couch.

Below him, just a few feet away, Louis is a vague shadow in the dark, curled up on an air mattress with a thin sheet tangled up in his legs, face turned away.

Everything is deceptively still. With a shudder of a breath, a creak of his bones, he sits up and loops both arms over his stomach, eyes closed now, waiting for the swells of nausea to pass. If they pass at all. Feet to the floor, no pressure on his heels as he shuffles over to the sink, glasses face down in the rack and edged all inky and strange. Moonlight is far away, hidden across the room and seeping through the curtains in a stagnant paint spill. In the corner of the kitchen black curls close, the glint of the sink a still, lifeless silver. Harry pours himself a near empty glass, sips feebly at the water, and rests his free palm on the edge of the bench.

It’s three in the morning, according to the beady light of the microwave clock. Harry sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

They weren’t there for the crash but being there in the smoking aftermath has only served to worsen the way he dreams about it happening. He’s plagued by all the ways the truck could have surged. The hundreds of unknown scenarios, of angles and tire marks and speed. This combination of haunting variables have found never-ending ways to combine themselves gruesomely.

Dry mouth, dry lips, sticky tongue caught at the roof of his mouth. He takes another slow sip. The edges of his nightmare are almost gone. The end lingers because it’s an imprint of a memory, the grainy dirt under his hands and the shards of glass stuck in his boots. Dad’s face, red from sunburn and shock. The wreck, the truck upside down with the roof caved in, the windscreen smashed through, and Pat—

“Harry?”

Water spills over his fingers and lands with a _splat_ on the tiles. He’s lucky the glass doesn’t follow. In the barely there blue that beams from the window Louis is ruffled and sleepy, hair a mess, resting heavily on an elbow and peering up at Harry in the dark.

“You alright?” he asks, edged with sleep.

Shaky, Harry sets his glass down on the bench. “Fine.”

Louis sighs, flops onto his back and rubs his fists over his eyes, knees tenting in the sheets with his feet flat to the mattress. _You look so warm. So worn. Familiar._ Harry taps his thumb against the glass and looks away, bottom lip bitten between his teeth. Downstairs, one of the washers rumbles, an old pipe shuddering up through the walls.

“You sure?” Louis checks, arms lazy and splayed around his head, chin tilted.

This far away Harry can’t read his face, but the quietness around them, the faux calmness, has him drawing closer step by tentative step. Gingerly, he lowers himself with a wince onto the edge of the air mattress. It sinks a little beneath his weight, so old and taped up in places, air surely escaping. It’ll be flat to the floor by morning. But it’s warm. Sheets soft to the touch. Louis shifts onto his side and the radiating closeness of his body is a beacon, a new heat sweeping down Harry’s spine as their eyes brush and linger.

“Just a nightmare,” Harry says, though it’s hardly a sound. He puts his chin on his knees and stares at his worn feet.

Such a childish thing to admit, though in his head he knows his fear stems not from the lingering nightmare itself, but from the implications of sharing it aloud. He’s afraid to tell Louis, afraid that anybody might be able to see this part of him. A terrified little kid. Twenty is too old to be jolting awake all teary in the dark and yearning for the familiar touch of a parent, but he wishes Dad were here, at least, wishes that he had enough courage to shuffle down the hall and knock at Ev and Ned’s door and ask to curl up in their sheets. Being able to admit to wanting that touch churns his stomach something awful.

“Was it about the accident?”

Harry bites at his cheek and wonders how Louis came so quickly to that conclusion. No doubt it’s written all over Harry’s face.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Harry says, meeting Louis’ gaze now. He’s sat up, leant on a palm, and at Harry’s words his face changes. The apology forms around his mouth before the words get out. Harry doesn’t want it. “But, yeah. That.”

Louis moves closer and Harry closes his eyes, bracing himself for _I’m sorry_ or _do you want to talk?_ or the other litany of phrases and pity that they all churn through with each other. Instead comes the wavering brush of Louis palm, not quite resting on his shoulder.

“Can I…” He takes his hand away. “Is it okay if I give you a hug?”

Harry blinks, bewildered. How fervently they’ve touched each other, how urgently and without question. And yet. And yet…

“Yes.”

To be cradled brings both embarrassment and relief. He stays with his knees to his chest, arms locked tight around his shins. But he tips his head onto Louis’, and soon further, dewy forehead pressed to dewy neck. An image comes to him. Library books spread on Elijah’s bedroom floor. _History of the Renaissance._ Male bodies sculpted and painted and crafted in ways he’d never seen. Touching tenderly, touching violently. Sometimes that appeared to be the same thing. One interchangeable with the other.

Louis’ arms stretch across him and it’s dark but Harry can feel the lines of him well enough to picture this embrace in daylight. The slant of light in the ridges of their knuckles. Ruddiness clinging to their cheeks and the inner corners of their eyes. Touching tenderly, despite the tempest brewing in the distance.

“You don’t have to keep this in,” Louis says. “That’s what makes it fester. What makes it hurt. It’ll be okay if you try to let it go.”

“It’s not that simple,” Harry says.

“No. It never is. Otherwise it wouldn’t feel like this.”

Harry presses closer and Louis obliges, squeezes him tighter, thumbs digging trenches into the muscle of Harry’s arms. Here for the long haul.

“I don’t want to forget,” Harry whispers. “And if I let it go that’s what I’ll do.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” Harry insists. Embarrassed, he brings a hand to his eye, palm rubbing at the rough sleep there. Sweat is blossoming at his temples, all the places their skin touches shiny with it.

“We have a tendency to see and feel in black and white,” Louis says. “Pain, joy, all of it. They can coexist if you let them. Some things are meant to be felt together no matter how different they might be.”

Harry lifts his head. Away from the furnace of Louis’ neck is a momentary cool. It fades quickly. The dark holds them as they hold each other and Harry has such absurd heaviness in his chest, a swelling that only protrudes further with each breath.

“Happiness can’t recognise itself if there’s nothing to compare it to,” Louis says. “You’ll drive yourself mad ignoring the hurt and pretend it’s okay and then you can’t figure out why nothing makes you feel good. Why you can’t get up in the mornings anymore. Why you feel useless to the people around you. Why the only thing you can feel is pain when you let yourself feel anything at all. There’s so much good, Harry. I promise. You just have to let yourself see it. You have to let it in, and sometimes that means letting other things go, even if it’s only for a little while. And when you do, the pain doesn’t lose its meaning. It doesn’t leave. But _fuck,_ the happiness is unlike anything else.”

Defensiveness is a tempting wave to catch and it takes shape between them. _You know absolutely nothing about me, about this place, about what we’re going through._ The thought sweeps past him, but soon fizzles away.

He’s caught in Louis’ words. It all makes sense to say but he doesn’t know how to actually get there, too full up with this guilt, this sadness, all the loss. Happiness is the tip of an iceberg he’ll never have a hope of reaching, weighed down by the dark-blue underbelly that remains unmoving and gigantic and menacing beneath the water.

“I’m so tired,” Harry says, ducking his head. Louis’ hand slides up from his arm to hold the back of his neck. “I can’t—. I have to keep going. I can’t stop. I have to be there for Molly and the farm. I have to be there for my Dad. I can’t just…”

The words won’t come. All he has is a distressed huff of breath, squeezing his temples with his thumb and middle finger.

“Hey. Listen—”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

Louis drags him in, face pressed to chest, fabric damp under Harry’s lashes. He doesn’t realise how tightly he’s holding on until he wipes his cheek and his knuckles ache, the flimsy fabric of Louis’ shirt wrinkled from his anxious grip. He lets himself be held and burrows back into the heat of Louis’ skin, just for tonight, while it’s late and quiet and this could still very well be a dream, while the little apartment is sound asleep and nobody has to know that he’s breaking.

Then Louis says, “I think I should go. It’s what’s best.”

Their faces knock as Harry lifts his head.

“Go?”

“I can’t do this with you, Harry,” Louis says. “It shouldn’t go any further than this. If anybody found out…”

Harry’s stomach drops. It takes a mere second for Louis to get a read on his expression, on the quiver of his hands as he retreats.

“No, _no,_ ” Louis rushes, pulling Harry back in, thumbs rubbing over the backs of his hands. “I didn’t mean it in that way. I'm not ashamed. I’m just supposed to be unbiased in everything. I’m not supposed to…God. I’m doing such a shit job of this. I’m fucking it up. And I don’t want to fuck you up in the process of that.”

“Louis—”

“I should go,” Louis repeats, even as he brushes a curl back from Harry’s forehead, the sweetness so far removed from the words. “In the morning I’ll go back to the B&B and sort out a room. I’ll keep my distance, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“But,” Harry flounders. He shouldn’t be so hung up on this. He should agree. He should be letting Louis do what he wants. He should be pushing him out the fucking door. This sudden rush of panic is unexplained and unwarranted. But not unfamiliar.

To be left alone again. To be left alone by somebody he didn’t realise he cared so much for the company of.

“I’m sorry for touching you,” Louis says. Another brush to an errant curl. “For putting you in this position. It was a mistake.”

“It wasn’t.”

He’s done it now. Said those words. And maybe Louis is right. All they truly seem to do around each other is make mistakes. But a mistake implies wrongness and the way Harry feels when Louis touches him is the closest he’s been to peace in a long time. The turmoil comes after, and readies itself before. But the act of being held, of being kissed, of being seen, stands on its own. To be touched the way Louis touched him is no such mistake.

Harry holds his gaze despite the trepidation that skitters down his spine. He’s tremulous from just two words of honesty.

“Harry…”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Harry repeats, trying to find his footing. “I’m not sorry and I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t regret it. And even if I did it’s not enough to stop me from wanting it to happen again.”

How’s this for coexistence: after the day by the river all he wanted was to see Elijah again, and all he felt for that was shame. To have something pure and outside of this wasteland, only for it to be taken away, is what sparks both the need and the fear. Fear of himself, fear of loss, fear of letting go. Need for himself, need for companionship, need for safety.

None of these things are ever guaranteed. Not for long. So he’ll take what he can while it lasts, because it won’t last. Shame and want are coexisting and that scale is precarious and easily tipped.

There’s a beat before they come together in which he thinks he’s ruined everything. He wishes he could take it all back. He wishes that none of this had ever happened. He wishes, and wishes, and then Louis puts his thumb on Harry’s bottom lip and rests his finger under his chin, his other hand curling in his hair, and brings him close to kiss him soundly.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks.

“No,” Harry says honestly. “There aren’t many things I’m sure of.”

“Should I stop?”

“Please don’t.”

Harry knows neither of them will admit that it might already be too late to go back, and he won’t admit to himself that he’s already too far gone, that he needs Louis now, the idea of him, that he might always need him, that picking at the scab and watching it bloom bright and full again is too intoxicating to lay to rest, that surrendering to temptation has always been his downfall, that he’s never really been as strong as he tries to make himself out to be.

Elijah had Harry’s heart on a string before they both ever knew they’d caught each other.

It’s so late, so hot between them, sweat slick behind Harry’s knees, behind his ears, flushing his chest when Louis flicks a thumb over his nipple. He touches Harry’s neck like he’s touching fine glass. Those soft hands, the pads of his fingers featherlight where they come to rest in the dip of Harry’s collarbone.

There are sleeping bodies down the hall, Molly and Pippa on a spare mattress with Ned and Ev in the master. The entryway is just metres from where he and Louis are bundled together on the floor. His knees are starting to ache from the awkwardness.

Louis must sense his hesitance. He brushes his thumb back along Harry’s cheek, separating their lips in the process. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep, yeah?”

“Wait,” Harry rushes, tightening his hold before Louis can pull away. He’s not ready to let go. “Please.”

“Please what?”

Harry has to close his eyes. If he doesn’t say it now, he never will.

“Touch me. I want you to touch me.”

“Where?”

Shaky fingers guide a wrist. Chest, abdomen, waistband. “Here.”

“Where, Harry?”

Harry’s eyes are still closed, Louis’ voice by his ear, wet mouth, wet breath. The tantalising back and forth drag of Louis’ fingernails along the sensitive skin just below his underwear has him shaking. He reaches out.

“Here.”

“Yeah?”

“ _Please._ ”

“ _Ssh_.” A wet kiss under Harry’s jaw, a squeeze of fingers along the outline of his cock that makes him gasp, the curve of Louis’ mouth smudged against his cheek. “Quiet, love. C’mon.”

The guilt creeps in, it always does. But a sweetness comes on just as strongly. Harry didn’t know it could be like this, each question and puff of breath emitted with intent. Gentle but charged. Careful but careless. Recklessness with the illusion of a safety net. A safety net aflame. He hardly knows Louis. He barely has a handle on himself. But if he changed his mind and pushed them apart and brought some semblance of his usual grip on reality to this situation, he knows the pull-out would be folded up the next morning, no questions asked.

There lies the shifting ground where the roads of understanding and lust and the threat of vulnerability intersect. That is the place that shakes him, that has his fingers curled painfully in Louis’ clothes, that has him wedging his thigh between Louis’ own and panting, lax mouths scraping messily together in the dark. He knows Louis won’t tell. That Louis understands. That he can be touched, touch in turn, and this, for now, three a.m with the lights off and the thin sheets up over their shoulders, is the place he can be the real Harry. Harry who hurts, who needs affection, craves it. Craves softness, rawness, the in between of all those things.

“Louis,” he rasps.

“Yeah?”

The answer is immediate, like nothing could be more important. Harry spreads his palms over smooth skin. He wants so much. He’s fucking dying for it.

“Tell me I’m pretty?”

The second of pause is a millennium.

“You’re so pretty, Harry,” Louis says. “You’re so pretty.”

And that’s it. A callused part of him crumbles in a way that is beautiful and rare. The erosion of a dead river giving itself over to new growth. Tears spring up and fill it again.

“You’re gorgeous,” Louis continues, the words pressed into Harry’s hair, into his neck, into his teeth. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. You’ve got the prettiest fucking mouth.”

When Harry comes he sucks on Louis’ fingers and lets himself be tipped onto his back. There’s a fire burning in him, scorching his chest and his cheeks. He’s flaking up, peeling away, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

-

_‘You have seven new voicemail messages. Last message received—second of April, eleven a.m.’_

A beep.

Shallow breathing down the line. The squeak of a revolving door. Muffled voices.

A rattling click. The dial tone sounds worlds away.

-

The notebook, once thin, flat, and an unscathed black, is now home to crevices and cracks. Multi-coloured post-its stick out from it’s pages like childish tongues. The tiny thing is bloated, falling apart at the seams, tucked up under Louis’ arm or into his chest like one nurtures a baby, bound together with a stretched rubber band to hold the array of pens slotted into the thin elastic.

Harry can still recall the first time he saw it resting on the bar-top between them, what he read then as some kind of assuming gesture of knowing, an extension of Louis’ pinched face. He’s not sure what to think of it anymore.

It’s been filling up for weeks. Soon, another will take its place. This isn’t news to Harry. He’s seen it first hand, Molly’s words in the pages, his own by the river, Louis opening it up, fingers soon pen stained when inspiration strikes him, when he becomes indulged in conversation at the pub, stuck in corners for hours with glasses stacking up while Harry walks with Pippa or sits out with Jai, coming in to find Louis in the same place, alone or still in company, hunched over and writing, brows pinched, little post-its stuck along the edges of table-tops and bars.

Harry starts finding them everywhere, crinkled into little balls on the floor of the truck, pastel pink stuck under his boots, baby blue and lemon yellow mixed up in their washing, gone furry from the detergent. They’re a physical reminder of what Louis is here to do, and each time Harry unsticks one from the bottom of his foot, he has to pull his eyes away from the slope of Louis’ shoulders, the bend of his spine, and back to his face and down to earth again.

Sometimes the little post-its are scribbled with writing. Notes, people, symbols and stars and flurries of exclamation points. Harry never gives them back. He doesn’t really know why. Maybe he’s legitimately lost it enough to believe that hoarding bits of paper in his pocket will create the illusion that he’s grounding himself, that soon they could be put on display for the country to see, all their sweat and tears, all their losses.

Farmers are a proud people. Nobody in Bourke, Louth, anywhere up here, would ever deny that – instead they’d fiercely protect the very fact.

But Louis is charming and easy to talk to when he wants to be, and Harry watches him from across the room as he gets in close with farmers, with locals, with the truck-drivers that pass through in their colossal machines, transporting close to nothing up through dying outback towns. Pride remains intact, it doesn’t waver between them, and Harry recalls how swarmed they were in the week after the crash, the journalists in their dress pants that looked like they’d been lifted straight out of a political cartoon, fancy shirts sweat stained, cramped up in the hilariously terrible hire cars they’d picked out, cameras strapped around their backs, crawling up and down the highway like spiders.

Leaving flowers like it meant anything past their front cover photo.

Nobody wanted to say a word. Ev drove business back from the pub just so the locals would still come in for the company. Nosy outsiders create tight-lipped town-folk, so looking out across the pub and seeing Louis shoved into a corner with the men Harry once feared in awed and childish ways is something of a revelation.

They laugh with him, look over his shoulder as he writes, offer more. A transcendence has happened and Harry has missed it, consumed with fighting Louis away, with being stuck under the weight of this endless summer’s wave. The hostility has drifted, and instead familiarity remains. The truckies stop in to _The Evelyn_ and buy Louis a drink, tell stories of their travels with wide cracked palms and beetroot noses, lined skin aching with their wet, emotive eyes, basking in the attention of the eager listener, of somebody from the outside who finally, is paying attention.

Louis has befriended these pockets of people right under Harry’s nose. Sheep farmers, shop keepers, Ev, Ned, Tilda and Jai, school teachers, teenagers, and even Tom, who smiles each time Louis pops his head into the servo to say hello. Pippa is enamoured with him completely, like a pup to an old rag that smells of it’s siblings, following him with her face to his side.

He asks his questions and types his emails and speaks with God knows who over the phone, and all the while Harry watches, peers from behind the couch with curious eyes, from across the room at the pub. At night, when they’re side by side on the pull out sofa and he thinks about touching him, knowing that he could, if he wanted. Knowing that if he lets Louis in to this part of himself, lets him have kisses, lets him touch, that every moment in between and after will be full of just that, thinking of the next time they’ll fall together, and not the pressing questions he sometimes sees floating around behind Louis’ glazed eyes.

He doesn’t want to be part of it. He doesn’t want the cameras and the lights and the stress. There’s enough happening here already, enough going on inside his head. He doesn’t need the country right there, trying to figure it all out, too.

Still, though, Louis persists.

“Has your family always lived here?” he asks. They’re driving back from Bourke, early dinner done and sunlight slanting down like shiny blades, knives to the ground with the sharpness of the heat, a touch enough to leave a burn. The CD keeps skipping and Louis slaps the dash, other palm spread over the pages of the little notebook. Somehow, he’s managed to find a blank page.

Harry looks back to the road with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah.”

“How many generations?”

“I don’t know.” He does.

“Have you ever thought about—”

“Louis,” Harry interrupts, head lolling back against his seat, then onto the window. “Can’t we talk about something else? _Anything_ else? Can we have a normal conversation?”

“When have we ever had a normal conversation?” Louis says, tucking one leg up onto the seat. Harry shoots him a look. “I think it’s important.”

“Well, that’s great to know,” Harry continues, “but _I_ don’t think it’s that important. So.”

“ _So_.”

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Oh, no way,” Louis says, words curled on a laugh. “Nuh-uh. Don’t turn this around.”

“I’m not turning anything around!”

“Yes, you are!” Louis pokes Harry’s shoulder. Between them, Pippa yips at the excitement, chasing Louis’ hand back to his chest.

“Am not!”

“Unbelievable,” Louis mutters. Arms crossed over his stomach, staring resolutely out the window, his entire profile is edged burnt gold, thin hair lit a luminous white at the tips, and as they pull through the gate, house looming as a unassuming silhouette in the distance, Louis turns Harry’s way, arms still crossed. “Is there anybody around here who knows _anything_ real about you?”

It’s supposed to be teasing, another bite for Harry to lash back at playfully, but as he slows the truck the thought sinks down his spine in a chilling treacle. _No. They’re either dead or they’ve run far, far away._ He turns off the ignition. If this were a few weeks ago, they’d both have spat at each other and stormed off to brood in isolated silence, only speaking again after a push and a shove into another bitter conversation. The urge to tell Louis to fuck off is on the tip of Harry’s tongue, but Louis’ regret beats him there, earnestly.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“You still said it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And yet, you’re not wrong.”

“Harry…”

“It doesn’t matter.” Harry shoves the truck door open, Pippa climbing into his lap to get out.

“Wait.” Louis lunges forward to pull the door closed again.

Harry glares. “I’m tired.”

“I know,” Louis says. His thumb slips under the cuff of Harry’s shirt. Pippa is wriggling now, confused, eager to run and beat the sun to the line of the horizon. “Can we go for a drive?”

“A drive,” Harry repeats. “We just drove for an hour.”

“Somewhere else,” Louis says. “Somewhere you haven’t been in a while.”

And Harry understands what Louis is doing, what he’s saying without using the words. _Show me. If you don’t want to say it, show me something real._

They speed through the cracked openness. The Hilux rattles, Louis’ fingers gripped tight around the handle above the window. Harry glances into the rearview mirror to watch the plumes of dirt that powder up. Red-orange-black cascades across the bodies, a rapid-flicker of rays searing through the glass. This drive is endless.

Finally the corner of the fence-line comes into view, and Harry slows, Louis’ body jolting with inertia as the truck groans with the turn of the wheel, coming side on to the clouds of red that trail almost endlessly behind them. 

Finally, facing back towards the property, Harry brings them to a complete stop and cranks the handbrake, the sputtering, shaky bursts of the engine silenced.

Louis lets out a breath.

Out in the open, Pippa runs herself into a frenzy, barking wildly as she sprints, coming back only when Harry whistles sharply for her, ragged tennis ball from the side-door in his grip. She chases after it madly, spit-slick mouth and bounding legs, muscles pulled tight with her strides. Beside him, Louis shades his squinted eyes with his hand and looks around them, the empty fields, dead soil, and then beyond the fence, the endless sprawl of nothing, the vague shadow of curled up skeleton shrub, and the bulbing sun melting down into the ground like searing metal, powerful and scorching, liquid and sticky and physical.

Pippa seeks shade under the Hilux once she’s worn herself out, body flat to the ground in search of any kind of coolness. Harry drops the tailgate and pulls himself up. Louis follows him after a beat of hesitation, and from their perch they look out towards the empty outback, where west, the desert envelops the world with its dry mouth, the true outback flourishing in the way only a dry heart can.

After what could be hours Louis sits forward, hands clasped between his knees.

“I wish I had something like this when I was a kid.”

Harry says nothing, and at his expression, Louis hurries to explain himself.

“The space,” he says, gesturing out. “The wonder of it. Infinite.”

“I guess,” Harry says, shrugging one shoulder.

It isn’t infinite to him. The fence-line is the most definitive kind of dead end, everything that follows after it a purgatory, the no-go zone. Even to come this far out from the house, now a speck of their imagination in the distance, pulls at his chest. But Louis looks out to it with a dampness, lips pulled into his teeth, eyes trailing over the flatness.

“Wonthaggi.”

“What?”

“That’s where I grew up,” Louis says. “Sort of.”

He leans back on his palms and Harry follows the movement. Louis stares resolutely out to the sun.

“I don’t remember much of it, but I was a small town kid before my dad finally fucked off. After that we moved around all over the state. We ended up stuck in these really shitty places, inner suburbs, all the slums the squeaky clean city politicians want you to forget still exist.” Louis sniffs and picks at a loose thread on his shorts. “Mum followed whoever gave her the time of day. Then my sisters started coming along. We lived in these shared flats, two rooms between, like, eight of us. Summer was unbearable. I used to stay out on the street and chuck marbles at all the passing cars and heard my sisters away from the road. The whole place was like that. Kids crawling everywhere.”

Harry takes the words in and waits for more.

“I don’t know if I can even say that I _grew up_. I was a kid one day, collecting seashells and skateboarding terribly and getting into trouble at school, and then I was the older brother keeping my mum afloat. I stitched her back together after every messy break up and explained to my sisters why we were moving again, why we had to leave our short-lived friendships at the schools we never attended. It was shitty. It was hard on the girls even before their dads wanted joint custody.”

With their chests to the sun like this, in some other universe they could be at the beach, somewhere like Bondi, ocean spread before them, waves and foam slipping up over their shins. A shared towel underneath them, noses pricked pink. No talk of hardship. No talk of loss.

“I can’t imagine having this, is what I’m trying to say,” Louis says, gesturing outwards with a nod. “Space to move without knocking an elbow into a wall or another person. Space to breathe. Space to _live._ Even when I was still in Wonthaggi the beach was a border. It was never endless even though the water stretches out forever. You can't imagine swimming that far.”

“It gets old,” Harry says. For him, the beauty of sunsets and the landscape and the natural world caved to the other side of the sublime years ago. “I’ve never even seen a real city, or met many people outside of the shire. The furthest I’ve ever gone is Brewarrina, but that was to help with lambing. I already knew everyone I saw there.”

“But that’s the thing. Every person you’ve ever met is like your family,” Louis says, facing Harry now. “I’d kill for that kind of stability. That unsaid trust. Knowing people have your back.”

 _But nothing changes,_ Harry wants to say. _They have your back if you stay the same, if you’re the little boy they’ve always known and had under their thumbs. Change creates crevices. Change makes the people here want to die._

“Maybe you’re right,” Harry says, considering the words. “But…I’ve always imagined what it’d be like to be a stranger to somebody. Not having them think they already know you inside and out from the second you meet. That happened to me all the time as a kid. Everyone knows my dad, so everyone already knows me. And to them, I’m still that boy. I’ll always be that boy.”

Louis’ fingers brush his own. The touch is timid but undoubtedly real.

“Maybe you need an escape,” Louis says. “Have you ever thought about leaving? Even just for a little while?”

“No,” Harry says, clamming up. “No. I don’t want to leave.”

“How can you know if you’ve never even—”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Louis goes silent. Harry doesn’t miss the way he pulls his hand back into his lap.

“Leaving home was the best thing I ever did,” he says quietly. “I was scared shitless. The unknown is terrifying and huge and so easy to get lost in, but that’s where you find all the best bits of yourself. When you get lost enough to go looking again.”

Beneath them, Pippa huffs in her sleep, near inaudible under the heavy heat, the truck and their bodies a speck against the outreach of the fields, and Harry feels small, curled into himself, backed into a corner despite the openness that surrounds them.

He isn’t lost. He _isn’t._ He’s where he’s supposed to be.

“Y’know, when I started uni I was around new people all the time,” Louis goes on, propping a foot up against the end of the tailgate. He’s got a slithered cut on the slope of his knee, all pink-shiny, tan skin, downy hair, so lovely that Harry has to look away. “It was like a revelation to me, y’know? All the shit I used to write down under my covers at night and hate would be praised. The lecturers wanted more, and for the first time in my life I felt pride in what I was doing. I had the confidence to explore my art and that helped me explore myself. Like, wow. I can do this? I can try these things and be real and figure out that I like being around men for more reasons than I realise, and if I stand up at a party and read from Baldwin like a pretentious idiot there are people in this room who might understand.”

He has this way of speaking that seems so casual, chatty, each word a dip and ebb, but still, everything is carefully laced with meaning, falling down from thin lips like he knows Harry will be there to catch each breath; anybody would be lucky to hear the inhale and exhale and the hiss of a consonant, the strength of a vowel. Curious spot of light on the tip of his nose, stubble rough along his sharp jaw, a spark reflected in pale eyes, his curled fingers, the protrusion of knuckles made for touching and pressing and leaving bruises. Harry stares and he can’t help it, not even a little, silently thrilled to be so close, to be able to look for so long, to find details, pores and blemishes, flaky skin on a dry lip, sweat, all coming to him in sharp technicolor.

“What?” Louis says, head tilting onto his shoulder as he regards Harry gently, and there’s no other word for it, because it _is_ gentle, that dip, the ring of his lashes, the care of the pointed accusation hidden behind the singularity of such a loaded word. 

“Nothing,” Harry says, because how could he ever explain it? How could he ever make sense? There’s no way to express what this does. What having a man so close, unbothered by Harry’s lingering eyes, makes him feel.

“You sure about that?”

And there, again, another little intrigue of gesture, Harry’s skin rippling with goosebumps at being so openly examined.

“You say it so easily,” Harry says, wetting his lips. They’re cracked, salt-wounded and wrecked from their exposure to the sun.

“Say what?” Louis says. “That I’m gay?”

Harry goes red from his temples to his toes. He nods.

Louis’ smile is curiously soft. Their fingers brush again. “Didn’t happen overnight.”

“Are you, like—” Harry searches for the words. A sudden desperation has taken over him. He wants to know. He has to know. “Do you tell people?”

“If they ask,” Louis says, smile growing, still close-lipped. He sweeps his thumb over the back of Harry’s hand. “My family knows. My friends. The ones that matter. I don’t exactly make an effort to hide it, though there are certain times I think I need to.”

“Like being here,” Harry whispers, unable to stop the shame that swells in his stomach. Louis doesn’t try to argue that point. His smile slips away but the momentum of his thumb over Harry’s hand doesn’t waver. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Louis says. He exhales heavily. “Just the way it is, isn’t it?”

The lightheartedness falls flat, the quirk of Louis’ mouth void of amusement when he meets Harry’s eye. Instead, their gazes flicker. Harry leans closer.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks. He’s sure this isn’t what he meant to say, but it’s what tumbles out.

“Yeah,” Louis whispers after a beat, nudging in, noses brushing. “Of course you can.”

Harry sighs into it. The inside of Louis’ mouth is a dewy relief from the dryness, and it’s slower than they’ve ever been with each other. The first brush lasts forever, the drag of their lips tentative, and when they part, just minutely, they both open hooded eyes to watch each other. Completely dazed.

The kisses stay like that; unhurried, hot, melty and plush like the lowering sun. Louis brushes their tongues and cups the back of Harry’s neck, scratching his fingers into the hair there. Harry’s toes curl up at the sensation, shifting closer. It’s so minute but that kind of pointed attention carries weight. Each touch is new, the brush of a nose against a cheek, the shift of their heads, Harry’s knuckles grazing the bare skin of Louis’ hip, sneaking into the gap where his shirt hangs off his body. Louis spreads his palm and pushes his fingers into Harry’s curls properly. Harry can’t help but shudder, mouths wet and shiny as they part.

“Is that good? You like your hair played with?” Louis checks, and Harry finds himself nodding, because God. He does. And he’d forgotten how much he likes it. He’d forgotten he can like being touched, that he has preferences, that he can be covered in goosebumps in a matter of seconds when he’s looked at in the right way. _Good_ doesn’t come close to being an adequate enough description, and this is only kissing, just the pressure of their mouths, nothing else, no grappling, no hands under shirts and bruises left by frantic fingers. Cautious, careful lips. Intimate kisses.

Harry pulls back to catch his breath. Louis’ fingers are still brushing through curls.

“Have you done this before?” he asks.

“Once,” Harry admits, and Louis presses a gentle kiss to his forehead, holding him there for a second before he finally lets go, slipping down from the tailgate on unsteady legs.

Harry follows, in a state of strange numbness as they climb back into the truck, Pippa curling up with her head in Louis’ lap. They drive away from the edge of this nowhere, back towards another. Harry’s mouth tingles, his entire body still struck with curling heat. It’s all so new. So terrifying. So right, if he’s ever able to let himself fully submit to that feeling.

He falls asleep in his own bed, staring at the wall, trying to stop himself from thinking of the man breathing slow, a room over. And then further, from thinking of the boy that would now be a man, hours away. Far, far away.

-

They didn’t see each other for days after that noon on the Darling. In places so sparse anything with significance, be it a place or a memory, becomes an island. Their little house, moated with fields. Louth a lifeless collection of flimsy shed-like homes, circled by dead shrub and crippling tar. Harry felt out of his mind, stuck trapped looking out his window with no way to get past the fence-line, like the failed soil would leave him sinking into thick riverbed mud if he were to make even an indent with the tip of his shoe.

Pop’s funeral took place in their shoebox church, creaky pews full only to the first two rows, the heavy silence between each word from the pastor pressing in from all sides. Peak summer, forty degree air outside magnified and concentrated in that damp, grimy light that melted and drooped like wax through the stained windows. Harry doesn’t remember if he cried. He thinks he might have. He didn’t hold Dad’s hand.

Elijah was next to him. Dad and Pat put them together, thinking it would help. Elijah didn’t even look Harry’s way for the entire service, instead staring at his shoes while sweat pearled along his forehead. Harry tried not to watch him. The guilt festered in waves each him he did, like he couldn’t help himself, knowing that if Pop were still here he’d have grabbed Harry by the back of his threadbare suit jacket. _Pay attention. Have some respect._

Instead, it was Ned’s hand there at the very end, a gentle squeeze to let Harry know he and Ev were right there behind him.

There was no reception. After the service condolences and sweaty palmed handshakes were exchanged. Louth locals who knew Pop well offered their apologies. Tom spoke to Dad with a hand on his shoulder, both their heads ducked while Harry waited stuck against Ev’s side, her and Molly whispering. Everyone went home, and then they drove back to the farm with the Robertson's.

Dad was out on the porch with Molly and Pat, and inside, hands clasped between their knees, Harry and Elijah sat silently with sweat beading at their necks.

Finally, with a sigh, Elijah shrugged off his jacket and rolled his sleeves.

“It’s not your fault. You do know that, don’t you? I can practically see you blaming yourself.”

Harry’s eyes welled up immediately, and embarrassed, he looked away, blinking rapidly to stop the tears from spilling over. _You don’t understand, Lij. I prayed. I prayed for him to go away._

“Haz—”

“Feels like it,” Harry bit out, rough with the threat of crying.

Elijah put his hand atop Harry’s. Harry pulled away.

“What are we going to do?” he said fiercely, voice low because the window was open, and alongside his guilt and sadness the last week had brought an inescapable kind of paranoia along with it. “Everything is so fucked up, Lij. I’ve never seen Dad cry. Never. And now Pop’s dead. He’s just gone. What if…”

“We’ll be fine, okay?” Elijah said, reaching for Harry again. “You’ll be alright. I promise.”

Harry let himself be held, let Elijah brush tears from his hot cheeks, the two of them so small, thin bones swaddled with long pants and button up shirts. Despite everything it felt good to be this close to him again, some twisted calmness descending over Harry’s body the longer Elijah touched him, heart rattling against his ribs at the light kisses he pressed over Harry’s temple.

“One day, I’m going to get us out of here,” Elijah said, a whisper-soft secret into Harry’s skin.

Harry never used to believe it when Lij said things like that, those hints at them both leaving, living some alternate life holed up together in a city apartment, Sydney all theirs for the taking. They’d work in a cafe to pay the rent, study at uni, become bigger than their little blip town. It started just as a joke between them, something playful when they were kids, but that was the first time it felt like Elijah really meant it, little house shadowed with strange grief, the summer everyone on the news said they’d finally see rain, that this was the one, the winter to turn everything on its head.

Elijah studied hard at school. He refused to be pulled out like Harry was, insisting that he finish before he took up working the cattle, insisting he at least apply for scholarships. _Where’s the harm in that, H? A kid can dream._ They’d joke about Elijah in a blazer and dress shoes and a sharp tie, attending some uptight university in the inner suburbs. Harry laughed at the thought back then, back when things were still teetering on the point of no return, back before each morning he would look out his window and see an apocalyptic daydream right before his very eyes, all those deserted worlds from the books he read as a kid peeling off their pages.

Because it was a joke. Because Mum stopped sending cards and Elijah made him two for his birthday each year, store-bought and handmade. Because the highlight of their day was seeing each other, smiling at each other, a look that held a hundred little secrets. Because Harry threw his entire heart into the people closest to him now and Elijah caught it with open palms and tucked it under his pillow to keep it safe. Elijah wouldn’t leave this behind, not the farm, not his parents, his friends, his family that spread further than blood.

He wouldn’t leave Harry.

In the bright noon light, Harry’s cheeks sticky with already dried tears, he didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing at all. He just let Lij hold him and finally pull him into an innocent kiss, breaking apart again at the sound of the front door creaking open, their parents calling out to them from the next room.

-

The intimacy that falls between them is all brand new.

Before, there were the dry gaps, a rockfall space to keep them at separate corners of each room, to keep arms distance between their bodies for long enough to inevitably cause a landslide. Tension between sharp edges finally caving in, crushing down, bodies scarring and jolting and careening into one another with no way to stop.

Morning comes and Harry rises early, boils half the water he normally would and loops their tea-bags. A careful palm finds the small of his back, _thanks_ whispered against the fabric by his shoulder, and when he glances back Louis is there with eyes bleary from the cut of light through the blinds, half-dressed and rumpled. In the truck Louis winds down the window and lets his arm hang, Harry’s Akurba slung down his back, white shoes entirely stained red, laces tainted to the very last thread. Lunch time, stuffy house, Molly asleep with her head lolled back against the couch as the telly plays, and in the kitchen Harry brushes a stray swipe of dirt from Louis’ cheek, hips pressed into the small corner between the sink and the stove, Louis in that space, too, half-smile and orange juice shared between them, clock ticking on the wall and oven humming.

At _The Evelyn_ they watch each other across the room and Harry finds himself flushing endlessly instead of curling his shoulders in when their eyes catch, finds himself weaving closer when Louis inclines his head, their ankles knocking under the table like their own little secret, and Harry listens to the conversations happening around him like each word is passing through a filter, only clearing when he glances over to find Louis looking back. Louis buys him beer, then buys him spirits when Harry complains drunkenly about the taste, says _thanks, Lou_ when Louis drives them back to Louth that night through the dark, Harry dozing off against the window with aching limbs.

Out in the paddocks, Louis is there, heaving up cattle and whistling for the kelpies and bringing them back fresh water from the house, making Molly laugh, making Harry’s chest hurt when the sun pours down and hits his face; when they’re in with the calves, so thin and tired and weak, skin and bones, and he runs his hands over their ears, and Harry wishes this were different, that everything around them would disappear, that torrential rain would flush down against them and ruin the heat.

At night, watching _Spicks and Specks_ reruns on the pull-out, Harry presses a kiss to Louis’ shoulder when, after an hour of inner rationalisation, he finally gathers enough bravery to tilt into his side. Pippa sleeps between their sprawled legs like it’s the only place she’s ever belonged, and Louis looks over in the dark, silver and ink-blue saturation sweeping along his neck. He stares, until there’s a hand cupping Harry’s cheek, a dry, gentle kiss all plush against his bottom lip, no rush, no sharpness, everything settled.

It’s quiet.

And much later, with Louis’ cock in his mouth, hands pushing his hair back from his face, he finds himself with that ache in his chest again, that yearning, because now that he has this, now that he knows this closeness and how brilliant it can be, he finds himself wanting it even as he’s being swarmed.

“You look so good like this,” Louis whispers, and Harry closes his eyes, warmth rushing over him in waves.

_Like this. With a man. This is it. This. This. This._

-

“Pass the potato salad, will you?”

“Does it look like I’m done with it?”

“ _You’ll_ be more than done if you don’t hand that bloody bowl over.”

A rogue piece of mayo-stained bacon goes flying across the table.

“Hey!” Ev scolds, laughter curling by her eyes despite it, and Ned and Jai look towards her, caught out with the bowl between them. The rest of the table watch on with their lips pressed together. “Give it here.”

There was rain in the east earlier today, the city slashed with a rare downfall, and behind them the news plays, each round of conversation rising and falling naturally, over and over, eyes glued back to the screen in unspoken hope. Nobody is willing to say what they’re all thinking aloud lest they jinx it. A cold front has started west, and it’s slow, but it’s there, and it’s _moving_. It’s the closest they’ve had to the possibility of rain since God knows when.

Distracted, Harry pushes what’s left of his roast around his plate. The table is split into ‘kids’ and ‘adults’. This is a sacred segregation that will likely carry on forever, even when they’re all in their forties and Ev and Ned are hunched in and grey. He’s wedged into the corner with Tilda on his right, Louis directly across from him, Jai on the diagonal--who still looks fired up enough to start an actual food fight with Ned. ‘Kids’ isn’t too far from the truth, sometimes.

Under the table, Louis’ calf shifts against Harry’s own. It’s been resting there all night and now and again Louis gives him a playful nudge. Harry attempts to ignore him for the most part because if he doesn’t he’ll end up smiling dumbly at his plate, unable to follow conversation.

They’re in another news-stupor when the phone starts to ring.

“Shit,” Louis sighs, glancing behind him at the clock. “Sorry, Ev.”

“Go’n then.” Ev waves him off with her fork.

Louis pushes away from the table and Harry refuses to acknowledge the slight chill that brushes through him at the loss of such a simple warmth. He blames it on the wispy air from the fan pulsing against the back of his neck instead.

Another commotion breaks out across the table between Ned and Jai, this time over the last of the roast carrots. It effectively mutes whatever Louis is saying into the phone, so Harry pushes peas around his plate instead of trying to read his lips.

Tilda nudges him. “Busy this weekend?”

“I’m always busy, Tils,” Harry says.

“I know _that_.”

She’s a little sunburnt, freckles saturated in brilliant patches along her cheeks and forearms that’ll nearly last through their so called winter, and in the low light of the little apartment, they’re even darker, her whole face glowing, eyes radiant, everything about her like looking into a lighthouse. It hurts him to even glance at her.

“I meant more along the lines of, like, a night in. I was thinking we could watch the game.”

“Yeah, of course,” Harry says, because they all do that together when they can, huddled up close in the pub.

Tilda must sense his train of thought, though, because she shakes her head and presses a knuckle into his thigh. “ _Alone._ ”

“Oh,” Harry says. He flicks his eyes up to Louis, still on the phone with his back to the table, hip leant against the bench, shirt hanging off his shoulders in the most infuriatingly handsome way. “I don’t know. It’s hard right now with the cattle—”

“With the cattle and the calves and the _everything._ Yeah, I know.”

She turns from him and starts cutting into her lamb.

“And I can’t just leave Louis back at the house. That wouldn’t be fair.”

Tilda raises a brow and looks at him in disbelief. “You’re not attached at the hip, are you?”

“Well, no…”

“He’s a big boy, Harry,” she continues. “I’m sure he can take care of himself for a couple of hours. You can drop him here if you want. Ev’ll have no issue talking his ear off.”

Harry stares at her and fails to come up with a witty reply, a joke, a little tease, anything to make her smile and break the air between them, to relax this back into a situation he has any sort of control over. And that word, control, twists his insides. It’s wrong to say. He never wants to have that over anybody, yet it’s what he feels like he needs to keep himself sane when it comes to Tilda. He doesn’t want to be that person, has tried all his life to avoid it, but now, their eyes locked, he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say no to her, how he’s supposed to say yes, how to begin wading through this.

“Tonight,” Harry blurts. Tilda blinks at him. “Let’s just—. After dinner, tonight? Did you bring your car over?”

“I did,” Tilda says slowly, eyes assessing him, going bright. “Eager, Styles?”

Harry nods, because he doesn’t have words. Everything has gone to static.

Louis sits back down at the table.

“How’d it go, lovie?” Ev asks. Harry eats so he doesn’t have to say anything, so he can concentrate on his plate and continue forgetting that there’s anybody else around him.

“Good,” Louis sighs out, like a relief. “All the last details are sorted, pre-production crew is all set and ready.”

That catches Harry’s attention.

“Good to hear,” Ev says, like she’s following this at all, like she knows what Louis is talking about, and Harry sits back in his chair, a slow dread curling up over his shoulders. Ev continues, “I thought they were pushing back?”

“I thought so, too,” Louis says. He shrugs. “They’ve decided to keep on the current schedule, so they’ll be here in a week.”

“What?” Harry says plainly, flicking his eyes between Ev and Louis. “Who?”

“Channel Nine,” Louis says, meeting Harry’s gaze wearily. Ev stares down at her dinner. The betrayal falls upon him like a snarling dog, and suddenly his hackles are rising, fork clattering down onto his plate.

“What the hell?” he says, addressing the table. “What does that mean? What are they doing? How long are they going to be here for?”

Louis clears his throat. “Just a few weeks—”

“ _Weeks!_ ”

“Harry—”

“How long have you known about this?” Harry continues, voice raising. “Or were you never going to tell me? Keep me in the dark until they show up at our doorstep with a camera pointed in my face? What, you think I’d wake up and let strangers waltz onto our property and let them think that they have _any_ right—”

“They won’t be on your property!” Louis argues. “I made sure they won’t go anywhere near you. They don’t have the rights. Molly signed on but you don’t have to be there on the days they want to have a look.”

“Actually, I _do_ have to be there,” Harry says, pissed off beyond belief. He pushes back from the table to stand. “You said you’d tell me when you knew about this. I _told_ you that I didn’t want—”

He stops himself, face heating further, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation in front of everyone, doesn’t want to recount his and Louis’ conversations, some of which they had with their hands on each other’s skin, in a space where he’s already been vulnerable enough. He’s fuming, and it’s only when his eyes start to burn that he turns away, unable to look at Louis any longer.

He stomps downstairs and out into the near-dark, stormy fuschia sky and golden cracks through the clouds, and he hates it for its beauty because nothing about what he remembers of these past few years has felt beautiful, has held any essence of goodness, and still each morning and night the sky paints itself perfectly, serenely, like it expects him to look up and smile.

The door opens, slams closed again, and then Tilda is by his side.

“Did you know?” Harry says, not to be cruel, but because he has to hear her say it.

“No,” Tilda says. She grabs his elbow to lead him away.

In her car, he winds the window down so he can breathe. The drive takes two minutes, but that time is enough for his insides to stew.

The impending intrusion feels quietly violent, malicious, and as the hot wind brushes through his hair, the sky changing colour in the wing mirror, his skin starts to crawl at the prospect of what’s about to happen, not just to him, but to Molly, to Ev and Ned, to the other locals who just want to go about their business, to be left alone and get through his without being asked _why_ and _how_ and _what._

Tilda pulls up onto the nature strip. They haven’t spoken a word. A few lone kids ride their bikes along the street, boxed windows illuminated behind flowery curtains, dead grass pale and prickled underfoot. The last of sunset casts it’s heavy shadow over their crippled make-believe suburbia. Silently they slip through the low-rusted gate and up to the front door, Tilda unlocking it with a gentle click, not bothering to turn on the hallway light.

Harry knows this house like the back of his hand, the formal dining room turned disastrous study, plush couches buried under boxes and stacks of filing and junk, the small kitchen with it’s fridge full of magnets from White Cliffs and Coober Pedy and Alice Springs, postcards and pictures spanning two decades, take-out menus for places that no longer exist, near-dead flowers always wilting on the dining table, the thin hall, the bathroom that’s all smooth, gooey pinks, old clawfoot tub and the shower curtain that sticks, and then Tilda’s room, small and still the same lolly-blue it’s always been.

Harry closes the door behind him. Tilda flicks on the small lamp at her bedside, and the room flushes a stilted gold, blurred like there’s a dust storm pulsing between them.

Her _IGA_ uniform hangs from the handles of her cupboard doors, posters and pictures covering every inch, _McLeod’s Daughters_ and _The Veronicas, Neighbours_ and _Home and Away,_ and then the ones of them, much younger, much happier, four twiggy kids huddled in the boot of a paddock-bomb, legs overlapped with big smiles, Elijah right there next to Harry, Jai with his fingers hooked up in Tilda’s mouth to make her smile, and Tilda, furious, the two of them mid-shot in a playful fight. Shots by the river, of the town and the sky, and in a frame on her bedside, one of the last pictures they all took together, a fuzzy thing they managed to capture with a self-timer the last time they attempted a camp-out, reflects from the fire cutting across the frame.

Everything in this room is a reminder of a different time, of a different version of himself that he hardly even remembers anymore. That has somehow transformed into this.

Perched on the edge of the bed, hands folded between her legs, Tilda looks up at him expectantly.

“Are you just going to stand there?” she says.

Slowly, Harry rocks forward off his heels and sits beside her, eyes on their feet. The carpet is a faded rose pink. He wants to cry. He wants to let his chest heave with it. She’s so lovely. She’s always been so, so lovely, ever since they met, since they were little kids with nowhere to put their trust but completely in each other, ever since he punched Scott Kumnick in the nose for teasing Tilda about her freckles, and her, letting him dote over her, giving him her complete attention when Mum left for good.

“Hey?” Tilda nudges him so that he looks up at her, and she smiles warmly, palm on his thigh. “You know it’ll be okay, right? We all care about you too much to let a bunch of journo’s get in your space.”

_Oh, Tils. You don’t even know. You don’t even know._

“And once it’s all over, you won’t ever have to think about it again,” Tilda continues, encouraging, sweet, lashes pale and delicate where the lamp brushes the side of her face. Maybe he can fix this, if he tries hard enough. If he just tries. “It’ll all go back to normal, I promi—”

Harry kisses her before she can say finish the word. He can’t take another promise that they both know won’t be met. Instead, he cups her face and lets himself feel it when she circles his wrists in her thin fingers and drags him closer, pulling him with her to collapse back into the pillows. It’s frantic. He doesn’t let himself breathe, and keeps his eyes screwed shut as he fumbles down for his belt, Tilda’s hands leaving his chest to unbutton her shirt, their mouths wet together.

The house is silent, and it’s dark out, now, just that tiny lamp and their smiling faces watching from behind the glass.

He knows he should slow down, that he should make this tender, but stopping means thinking and he doesn’t want to think. _I can make this feel good._ He pushes at her shirt, other hand on her waist, her fingers bunched in his hair, at his back as he kisses along her neck, up to her lips. _I can make it good. This is good. This is what I need._ Their hips line up and Tilda pulls at his hair, pushes it back from his face and cups his jaw, sweat beading along their mouths, temples, making everything salty, too-warm, too-close.

“Fuck,” Tilda rasps. Harry kisses her again to muffle the sound. “Fuck, Harry.”

_You’re so pretty._

He reaches for his pants, skin on fire. He has to stay present. He has to stay here. This is where he’s supposed to be, this bed, this room, this house. With her.

“You can touch me,” Tilda says, reaching for his hand and trying to wiggle out of her shorts all at once. They don’t have much time. Matt and Paula will come looking for them, and he’ll have to go back to the pub, face Ev and apologise, and Louis—

Shaken, he tugs at her underwear, presses up against her, and her high gasp, wet against his chin, should be enough to bring him back. _Tilda. Tilda. Tilda._ Her fingers find his hair again, nails scratching at the back of his neck. _Have you done this before?_ She’s whispering to him between kisses, unzipping his jeans, but all he can hear is his own laboured breathing. Everything is going fuzzy. The heat is too much, crawling all over him like bugs, like leeches burrowing down into his skin, sluggish blood pumping through his body.

_You look so—_

Tilda reaches into his jeans and Harry jolts back like he’s been burnt, dragging in desperate gasps of air.

“Harry?” Tilda says, her own breathing laboured. “What’s wrong?”

He closes his eyes and turns his head away. He can’t look at her, so fucking ashamed of himself. He doesn’t want to open his eyes, wants to claw them out when she sits up and reaches for him.

“Harry?”

“I can’t,” he manages, flinching away from her touch.

Outside, cicadas buzz and invade the empty space between them. Their stillness is almost imprisoning, both of them unable to move, their flies open and their shirts hanging from burnt shoulders, lips wet and bruised red.

“You can’t…” Tilda repeats flatly.

Harry doesn’t know what to say. He moves further away, out of the cocoon of her legs, and recoils into himself. He’s being observed from all sides. Tilda’s stare burns the side of his face, their old selves from the cupboard doors, from the bedside table. Completely surrounded by the seconds they’ve spent together.

Her eyes are shiny when he does finally manage to look at her, chin tilted and defiant to hide the shake in her jaw. Awkwardly, he does his jeans back up and listens to her do the same, trembling fingers fighting to push the buttons of her shirt into their place.

“We can just talk,” Harry says meekly.

“I think you should go. Now.”

“Tilda—”

“I said _go,_ ” she whispers, fierceness broken apart by the crack in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but even to his own ears it’s twisted. _What are you apologising for, kid? How many things? How can somebody accept an apology when they don’t even know what it’s for?_

“I know,” she says, looking down at her knees. Looking anywhere but at him. “I’ll see you later.”

“You will,” Harry promises, the one thing he stopped her from doing. He’s completely fucking backwards.

He steps out onto the veranda and steps out of himself, a bystander watching from behind the fence, on the corner of the street, trying to look away but unable to. Like watching a car wreck. He doesn’t realise how much he’s shaking until he tries to undo the latch on the gate and finds his fingers useless and feeble. Finally, he manages to swing it open, and slams it shut behind him. It’s pitch dark and all he can taste is dirt and hatred and Tilda’s lipgloss. He wants to scream.

Then comes the sudden urge to call Dad, to sob down the phone like a child and ask him to come home, but he can’t. It’s been too long and the phone has stopped ringing, just another thing he’s managed to completely fuck up, another part of himself to tarnish. The guilt festers inside him as he walks, and by the time he reaches the pub, the lights low and the street deserted, he’s flushed and sweating and glassy-eyed, and he spends ten minutes pacing outside, because going upstairs means explaining himself, apologising, seeing Louis, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when that happens, if he’ll fall apart or say nothing, if things will go back to the way they were when they first met. That’s how it should be. Another thing for him to throw into the fire. Why stop now?

It’s Louis who appears first. He steps out, pauses, and looks both surprised and relieved to see Harry standing there.

“There you are,” Louis says, exhaling. “Are you coming up?”

Harry shakes his head and stares at his feet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Louis says, voice oddly reedy. Harry clenches his jaw. “You seemed like you were doing okay and I didn’t want to upset you. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not the keeper of your feelings and I should have told you, and it wasn’t my place to tell Ev. You deserve to know these things. I just—. I feel like I have to protect you, even when I know better. I don’t know why.”

A thin knife lodges itself in his chest, one part anger and one part thankfulness, a little dash of pride glinting from the tip and mixing it all together in confusion. Collectively, it stings. He keeps his burning eyes on his feet and says nothing.

“Harry,” Louis says. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Harry turns away and fumbles to pluck his keys from his pocket.

“Harry.”

Footsteps approach.

“Home,” Harry manages, voice wet. He can’t get the fucking key in the door. _Fuck._ “I’m going home.”

“Babe—”

“Just _stop!_ ” Harry whirls, hissing the words. _Babe. Babe. Babe._ He wants to sag forward, be held, but he can’t. He can’t let that happen. He can’t be seen that way. And he can’t let Louis keep up this charade, this pretend scenario in which he can call Harry pet names and kiss him and be sweet and those actions have no consequences.

“Where’s Pippa?”

“Inside.”

“Go grab her. Please.”

“Harry—”

“Why should I tell you anything?” Harry snaps, shoving Louis away. “Why should I?”

They stare in a stalemate and out in the dark Louis’ eyes glint, his features set, fingers curled up into fists, and Harry wants to touch and be touched and not feel like dying. His head is going to explode if he doesn’t put his foot down on the gas and get them back to Louth. He can’t be here a second longer.

Finally, Louis turns away and heads back up stairs, coming back with Pippa a few minutes later. She bolts towards him and Harry has to duck his head to hide the way his eyes well up at her excitement to see him, the way she curls into his chest, the happiest little creature in the world no matter what goes on around her.

They drive through Louth, the service station lights a strange alien beacon in the night, flicking off and fading to nothing once they’ve passed.

Under moonlight the house is two dimensional, like Harry could kick his heel into the stoop and the whole thing would lurch backwards, flat to the ground. When he was a kid he sometimes thought of their lives that way, like this much dry land could never truly exist and all the people around him, himself included, were caricatures. All little pawns in some demented diorama, waiting to be lifted out of the box and pushed through a paper shredder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .......this was not supposed to take five months to upload but life is hard and time really do be moving in ways that my weary brain fails to comprehend. thanks for all the comments that got left on the last chapter. they're a blessing and i read through them all the time to fill myself with joy and motivation. and if you sent me a sweet message on tumblr i'm sorry i haven't responded! not really active there atm.
> 
> hope you're all safe and doing well and that this chapter was worth the wait (sorry!!) ♡


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